


The Unquiet Grave

by Belewitts



Category: Black Sails
Genre: 18th Century Nerdery, Angst, Gen, Supernatural Elements, Time Travel, ghost story, relationship mentions: john/madi, relationship mentions: silver/flint, relationship mentions: thomas/james/miranda
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-03
Updated: 2017-09-03
Packaged: 2018-09-14 11:16:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 49,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9179152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Belewitts/pseuds/Belewitts
Summary: While fighting for his measure on pardons Thomas starts seeing the figure of a one legged man. As events unfold it becomes less clear whether the man has come bearing good fortune, or bad.Or: Old Long John Silver saves Thomas from Bethlem, gets some revenge and has a lot of issues, and Thomas did not sign up for any of this.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The song John sings is an old folk song from around the 14th century, called The Unquiet Grave. Hence the title. ^_^

~

There was something strange in the air when Thomas came home that night. A damp, foreign smell of salt and tar and seaweed drifted back to him from the street when he stepped out of the carriage. He paused in the dirt courtyard before his door, looking about and leaving the footman holding it open so the golden glow of candles spilled into the yard.

At first he thought it was James. That perhaps his love had returned early. Thomas's heart soared at the idea he needn't wait another interminable week or more for the HMS Firebrand to dock, and was there ever a more appropriate name for a ship? But no, this was nothing like the fresh coast wind James always brought with him. There was something sinister about it, which simply didn't suit Jame's upright character.

Perhaps it was the chill accompanying the sea smell. Or the bell distantly tolling out of time in the dark. Or that low, lonely tune he could just barely hear being hummed underneath it.

He peered into the dark, searching for the source of the bitter briny odor as his carriage left the front stoop.

Then, when the coachman drove round the corner, the lantern light fell on a man standing by the gate and facing the house. He had a long coat, a smoking pipe, and a crutch tucked under one arm. The rest of the man was lost in darkness and the moment the carriage lights passed he disappeared altogether, like so much smoke on the breeze.

Thomas was left wondering if he'd truly seen anything at all.

Later that night after the servants had left, he lay in bed with Miranda and told her what he saw, the same way he'd once confessed his interest in James. The night was made for such hidden things, Miranda had once said.

“I may have seen a ghost this evening,” he whispered.

“Really?” Miranda looked quietly delighted. “You should tell Squire Roberts. He would love the debate,” she whispered back, teasing, and then turned more serious, “and it would help alleviate some of the rumors.”

“Rumors?” Thomas frowned.

“A madness of unrepentant atheism on top of your campaign to pardon criminals,” Miranda reminded him in that gentle tone of hers. Thomas sighed and rolled onto his back.

“Lord Roberts thinks half of London is leaning toward atheism simply because they've grown tired of listening to him go on about the Drummer of Tedworth.”

“That's overstating things. The number of people in London not currently enthralled with that story is conspicuously small.” Miranda lay a hand on his breast, making her point.

“There are more important things to talk about,” Thomas insisted, looking up at her, needing her to understand.

“I know.” She patted him softly. “But however irrelevant one more scandal may seem, it is a danger I would prefer not to court right now. Mention your ghost my love.” She lay back on their pillows and added with a smirk. “A hint at the fear of god it put in you wouldn't go awry either.”

Thomas was devoted to god, but he did not believe in fearing what one loved anymore than in suffering for it. Love, of god, or men and women, was a celebration in all its forms and should be treated with respect and care. When one did awful things in the name of it, brought people low with shame and penury and beatings, then Thomas could only argue that what they called “love” and “god” were not truly those things at all.

That they were brutalizing each other for something else entirely.

He had perhaps more dangerous leanings then anyone besides Miranda knew, even his beloved James. He had epitomized that “lack of moral restraint” in the bedroom which was so abhorrent to so much of society. He could not accept that god, who claimed to love and forgive all on one page, would condemn them on the next for things that amounted to little more than moral fashion.

He had confessed to Miranda, late at night, that if he did not choose to believe that love and peace were the word of god while passages denouncing sodomy were only contrived works of men, then he would be forced to throw the entire holy book out the window and god along with it. Because they were simply philosophically incompatible.

A rare copy of Theophrastus Redivivus was tucked into a corner of his office, and the anthology of all those great free thinkers was paged through more often then he could admit. If he could admit to having it all.

So the next night, when they dined with Roberts, Thomas did _not_ suggest any new fear of god, but he did entertain them with his opinions on the ghost. The table was delighted.

“Were you very frightened?” Lady Roberts asked.

“Not at all,” Thomas replied. “The poor spirit seemed more lonely then anything else.”

“A lonely ghost?” the ponderous Lord Cadwell grumbled into his wine. “What's the use of that?”

“And you say he was sailor?” Lord Roberts interjected, leaning forward with a glint in his eye.

“I suspect so.” Thomas tapped his glass before adding. “He was missing a leg.”

Lady Cadwell and Lady Roberts were both deliciously thrilled by that tidbit, and shook their napkins in excitement. Thomas shared a look with Miranda across the table, who was hiding a smile behind her glass of wine.

“Oh how awful,”

“Was it bleeding?”

“Was the stump nearby?”

“Was he wailing in agony?”

“No,” Thomas replied calmly, cutting at his lamb with a silver fork. “Nothing like that. It was just--” he waived his fork, “missing.”

“Perhaps it was a pirate,” Roberts chortled around a mouthful, and Thomas stiffened in his seat. “Little wonder you would be haunted by that lot,” Roberts continued joking. “I suppose the dead are rising in hopes of securing post-humous pardons along with the living.”

Thomas opened his mouth, a quick reply ready, and shut it abruptly when Miranda kicked her shoe at him under the table. She'd always had extraordinary aim.

He sent her a look – now how am I supposed to return that to you without anyone noticing you've misplaced a slipper?

She returned it with a challenging look of her own – I'm sure you'll think of something.

“More wine?” Lady Roberts asked, pointedly cutting through the sudden tension at the table and calling the footman to serve them all another round.

~

And so it went. The days blurred together for Thomas as he spent long afternoons waiting for James to return and planning their campaign in Whitehall with Peter Ashe. The story of his ghostly visitor made the rounds of high society and it did offer some small relief and sport for Miranda at dinner parties, and the Lampton's ball.

Though in hindsight they both wished they had thought to give the ghost some other occupation, because Roberts wasn't the only one to take delight in drawing a parallel between Thomas's stance on Piracy and seeing the spirits of sailors in the dead of night.

Nor was it the last time he saw the ghostly figure. When he'd returned home after that dinner with Roberts he'd seen the man again, this time leaning on an iron railing across the road. He was there again the night after that, and the night after that.

He became such a regular figure that Thomas found himself looking for him every night before he turned in. One morning he even thought he saw him through the lace curtains of his bedchamber, sitting on an overturned barrel by the gate with a hat over his eyes. As if he'd slept in the street.

Seeing the one legged man in daylight, as rumpled and dirty as any honest laborer somewhat ruined the mystique. Thomas began to suspect it was no ghost at all, but that someone very real was watching his house.

He thought of mentioning this to Miranda, but he didn't wish to alarm her. She had, only that same morning, expressed a worry over the potential exposure of their affair with James and there was little he could do to dissuade their spy right now, short of posting a guard on the corner.

That would alert whoever had paid the man and their watcher would likely disappear into the woodwork before being replaced by someone new that Thomas may not notice. At least he was aware of this man. Though why he'd been sent to watch their house rather then delve inside it was curious. Equally curious was how no one else seemed to ever see him.

But he put all of that aside when James finally came home. He walked in, bringing that clean sea breeze with him, hair glowing like a firebrand in the winter light, and Thomas was euphoric. It took all his education and willpower not to stride across the room and embrace him the moment his lover came through the door. If he could have flown across the floor separating them he would have done so.

Their drawing room had never seemed so painfully large before.

They made love that night, and it was everything Thomas had spent months dreaming about. He spent the dawn hours mapping constellations out of the freckles on James back and not once thought of his ghostly spy. Not even when he walked James out to the carriage drive later that morning, discussing the details of their proposal to the Admiralty. They shook hands on the stoop, and Thomas watched him climb into a black gig and ride away.

He paused just before going back inside, when that darker briny smell hit him and he looked across the road, startled to see his “ghost” standing in the usual spot under the gate.

He realized he'd half expected the man to disappear now that James was home, but there he was, and he seemed more solid than ever. Thomas couldn't see his face, for it was shadowed under a broad rimmed hat, but when he listened he could just discern the words of that haunting little song.

“My breast is cold as clay, my breath is earthly strong, and if you kiss my cold, clay lips, your days will not be long.”

Thomas rubbed his hands to warm them and quickly turned back inside, shutting the door firmly behind him.


	2. Chapter 2

The Earl's men came at mid-day, just after the grand clock in the dining room struck two. There was no warning. They simply appeared in the middle of dinner and Thomas barely had time to stand before they were manhandling him out of his seat.

He recognized two of them from his fathers employ and thought at first it was a gesture of authority. That instead of simply commanding Thomas's attention in a letter, or some other distant fashion as he usually did, the Earl decided to make a show of it and sent men to retrieve Thomas so the entire household would witness the display. So they would all know who held the stick.

It was the sort of thing his father did when something made him particularly angry and Thomas was busy wondering what that might have been today, while Miranda was demanding explanations.

Thomas managed a few whispered words with her, as Peter stood back from it all. He told her that he was sure this was just a performance. That he would speak with his father, see what he wanted and everything would be fine. She looked... frightened. She did not believe him at all. When the Earl's men tightened their grip, crushing his satin sleeve so hard Thomas thought his skin would surely bruise tomorrow, he snatched Miranda's beautiful fingers in his own and made her promise that no matter what happened next she and James would look after each other until he returned.

Then he was pulled away. Their outstretched hands slipped from each other and the last he saw of his wife she was being held by Peter. One of the Earl's men said something Thomas did not catch as he was hauled through the door, but he heard Miranda let out a horrible wail, and the sound of breaking glass.

Then he knew this was not a gesture.

He tried to rush back to the dining room, but the men grappled and dragged him down the hall like he was a criminal in his own home. One of the maid's stood by clutching a silver tray of jam and coffee in a trembling grip as they passed. The footman gaped, and the stable hands gathered in a small circle to watch as he was pushed through the back courtyard where his father's second best carriage waited.

He was thrust onto the bench of the coach, and one of the men took a seat across from him, before the door emblazoned with the Hamilton seal was firmly shut behind them both. The man banged on the roof with his fist, and the carriage gave a stomach turning lurch as it pulled away from the house.

“Where are we going? If I may ask,” Thomas inquired, just this side of impudence.

“Bethlem,” the man answered shortly.

Thomas stared.

“Bethlem,” he repeated.

The man nodded.

“Bethlem Royal Hospital?” Thomas asked again, voice cracking, sure there must be some mistake.

The manservant reached into a lock box on the floor of the carriage, pulled out a set of manacles and _smiled_. Thomas's blood fled from him faster then it did under the barber's needle, and the man in front of him smiled wider. It was an awful sight, and Thomas could not look away from it as the man unlocked the shackles.

It was accepted as truth in London's circles that servants and laborers of the lower classes were like children in their need to be lead. Thomas's opinion had often differed, but on one point he did agree; that the behavior of a lord was mimicked by those in his employ. Thus a man was who cruel or indifferent produced a cruel and indifferent parish.

The sneer stretching over this servant's face would never have seen the light of day if his master, the Earl and Thomas's father, had not made his own feelings of disdain for Thomas abundantly clear.  

The man pulled his wrists into the shackles and locked them without fanfair. They were very cold and so much heavier then he'd ever thought, and were going to ruin his lace cuffs. He felt oddly like a naughty child, who'd just gotten his stockings covered in mud.

“If this is some joke at my expense--” he began faintly.

“Your father is not a joking man, m'lord, as I'm sure you know,” the servant replied, more then a little smug.

“My father... has ordered me committed?”

The man looked like he'd been given one of the Queen's own sweetmeats. Thomas shut his eyes and leaned back in his seat, feeling faint.

A year ago he'd turned down an invitation by Lord and Lady Neville to accompany them on an excursion to Bethlem. It would be such an adventure they'd exclaimed, and surely Thomas who was always interested in expanding his mind would be delighted to see first hand the deformities on display there. Miranda had made up an excuse about a previous engagement and they spent the evening pouring over John Locke together instead.

He wondered if the Nevilles would come to gawk at him now, the way they had those other poor souls.

Thomas had many friends in London, and before he'd seen most of them walk out his salon, he would have said none of them would step foot in Bethlem. That they would protest this kind of treatment by abstaining from watching it. Now he suspected he would see more of them then he liked.

Which was likely exactly what his father wanted. His father was an ardent believer in the power of public shame. It was one of the many points on which they fundamentally disagreed. Suffering through the hospitals regime would serve no purpose in his father's eyes, if the contempt of their peers did not go hand in hand with it.

Outside the mud spattered window, dark walls and narrow alleys rushed past him. The size of the coach forced them to take a circuitous route on London's wider streets, but that only offered the briefest reprieve from what was coming. In a way it made it worse. The longer he sat there, the more he worried and wondered what would be become of him. If this was meant to scare him, or if, god forbid, his father actually meant for him to stay in that place, and for how long.

The coach rattled around his ears, an ungainly accompaniment to his personal crisis, and gave a lurch as they circled St Pauls and turned north. They took Aldersgate all the way up to the Old Street. Thomas took some comfort thinking perhaps the driver wanted to delay their arrival as much as he did, but it was more likely he simply didn't want to drive through Cheapside and get stuck between the crowded merchants.

All too soon they were rounding the turnpike and heading down Royal Row. The open fields of the moorland were cheerless and grey, with a low hanging fog coming off the artillery ground like smoke. When he looked out the window he could see the dark hulk of Bethlem looming in the distance, and growing larger by the moment.

Thomas began to pray.

Then their carriage jolted and slowed, and Thomas blinked at the Earl's man, curious. The man was not well pleased as he noticed the same thing, and he grumbled and checked a very fine pocket-watch in his waistcoat.

Outside the driver yelled, “Oi, clear the road up there!”

The coach slowed further.

“Oi you deaf?” The driver called again, louder this time.

“What's the trouble up there?” the Earl's man called.

“There's some beggar in the road sir.”

The Earl's man grumbled and stuck his head out the window. Thomas took advantage of the man's distraction to turn in his seat and peak out the little hole under the driver's footboard.

There was indeed a man standing in the road. It was difficult to see much of him between the distance and fog, and the bouncing carriage. All Thomas could make out was a dark shape, a crutch tucked under one arm and an empty space beneath the left side of his coat where a leg should have been.

Thomas's breath caught in his throat and a strong smell of salt blew towards them all, swirling the fog.

“Run him down,” the Earl's man growled from the window. It was so casually cruel Thomas almost thought he'd misheard.

“What?” he gasped, heart leaping into his throat with natural indignation and accompanied by a possessive sort of outrage on behalf of his “ghost.”

The driver hesitated.

“Did you not hear me sir?” The Earl's man yelled out the window at the driver, ignoring Thomas. “I said run him down. Or hand the reigns to a man that will.”

“No, don't!” Thomas ordered, forgetting that at the moment he had less authority than the horse being whipped outside.

“We’re expected within the hour, m'lord. Can't afford any delays.” The man sat back in the coach, and pulled a club from his belt, resting the ends in either hand and Thomas was suddenly aware that for the first time since he was boy he was going to be struck if he said one more word.

The carriage began to pick up speed again, and the Earl's man muttered to himself, “Damned highwaymen. Uncivilized the lot of them. Thinking to rob their betters.”

Thomas grit his teeth. “I think it's clear who the better man is. I would certainly call one of you uncivilized and it isn't that poor one legged beggar.”

The man twisted his club in his hands, then banged the carriage top with it and shouted for the driver to go faster, his squinty eyes not leaving Thomas's face. The horses picked up speed. They were galloping now, and the whole world was shaking around them.

Thomas turned around, to peek through the hole under the coachman's seat again, heedless of the threatening billy club.

 _Move_ , he thought watching with growing horror as they rumbled closer to the one legged shadow. _Please dear god, just move. Get out of the road!_

Pressed as he was against the seat he saw what the Earl's man did not. As they sped closer he saw the one legged man reach into his coat and pull out a pistol. He saw him aim at the oncoming carriage and he saw a flash and plume of smoke erupt with a sharp bang as it went off.

There was a cry from above and then Thomas saw their driver fall from the carriage with a thump. They lurched to the side and rattled past the unmoving body in the mud, and the Earl's man cursed. One of the horses screamed.

Another shot was fired from their left, then another from the right. Thomas brought his chained hands up, instinctively trying to protect his head from the gunfire. An explosion erupted from the rear quarter and one of the wheels came loose. The whole carriage tipped over and Thomas was confronted with a fast moving seat end which rushed forward and struck him on the face before everything went dark.


	3. Chapter 3

Opening his eyes hurt like nothing he'd ever known. He felt like a pilgrim struggling through an over bright and desolate compos mentis, dragging his mind behind him like a lead cannon ball on a chain.

He had little experience with wounds and little to liken them to, but his head ached, his side was one long line of pain, and there was a suspicious burning sensation on his face which he suspected came from slamming into the coach. His hands were scraped with splinters and chips of painted wood and his fingers felt absurdly large. When he raised them to his head and pulled them back they came away bloody.

A movement drew his faltering attention just in time to see a dark hand reach through the splintered window of the coach and grab the Earl's, man who was coming to beside Thomas. The man was dragged out of the carriage and dropped on the ground. Thomas, with some difficulty, rolled onto his belly and blinked blood from his eyes.

A whole company of black boots and dark coat tails filled the road and the end of a crutch limped among them, squelching the mud. The Earl's man was on his back, begging with hands raised. The crutch came to a stop by the man's head and then a pistol shot boomed across the road. Hands that had risen in supplication fell into the dirt and the dead face of the Earl's servant rolled towards the coach, staring with open eyes as a black spot welled up in the middle of his forehead.

Thomas gaped, his normally agile mind tripping on the unfolding events. I can't stay here, he thought muddily. He must get up. There were things he'd needed to do.

The crutch stomped closer, crushing a handkerchief with the Hamilton crest into the mire. Then that same dark hand reached into the coach and dragged Thomas over broken glass into the road. He must have cried out, but the noise did not impress anyone.

“Get me those keys,” a voice demanded. It was low and smooth like a deep red wine.

One of the shadows on the road bent over the corpse of the Earl's servant, and rifled about the waist before tossing a heavy ring with keys at them.

Then Thomas found himself propped upright against the side of the overturned coach while the same one legged man he'd been seeing everywhere wrestled with the manacles on his wrists.

His ghost was distinctly rank up close and any lingering suspicions he had about the man being a spirit vanished as Thomas inhaled the solid sweaty stench and the man cursed at the shackles in their joined hands.

He was smaller then Thomas, but broad of shoulder. His floppy battered hat, which once may have been an honest tricorne, was still pulled low over his face, and a ragged scarf was tied over his mouth and nose like the masks of tanners and dye workers. In the the dim, fog ridden afternoon all Thomas could see of him of was the long blue coat, a bandolier of pistols underneath it, and that crutch.

“Hello,” Thomas said, as if in a dream and addressing some boyhood companion he hadn't seen in years.

The man stilled his fight with the chains and looked up. Thomas was arrested by a pair of pale blue eyes, with the same shifting tone as that scrap abalone shell resting on the desk in his study. It was gift from James. He'd found it off the Channel Islands he said. The abalone eyes narrowed at Thomas, and then slowly crinkled at the sides above the ragged veil, as if they were laughing at him.

“Hello,” the man replied, just as softly and with as much familiarity.

Over the cripple's shoulder the rest of the band were busy at work, and Thomas counted four, maybe five men with poor cloths and undone collars.

There was something feral in their expressions as they stripped the body of the driver and the Earl's servant. The elegant pocket watch he'd admired only moments before made its way into the purse of a three fingered man with sunken eyes. They took the waistcoat, shoes, and linen shirt, even the man's wig and drawers and left the body lying naked in the road.

The horses were freed from their harness lines and the coach was quickly torn apart. He saw a man heave one of the cushioned leather benches over his shoulder, and another pealed off the driver's lantern. The only limit in what they took seemed to be their ability to carry it, and several of them were already loading down the horses with plunder.

It was like watching scavenger beetles crawling over the corpse of a dog. By the time Thomas's shackles were undone and thrown to the ground the coach was reduced to a skeleton.

“What 'bout that one?” One man, missing several teeth, asked with a whistling lisp and pointed a knife at Thomas. He sidled closer to his blue eyed cripple, who then turned his scarf covered face to look at the other robber, and nodded. The knife wielding rogue grinned, and Thomas's heart lurched, but before the bandit could step in to gut him the one legged man said,

“Trade coats, the two of you.”

“Eh?” the robber pulled up like a dog at the end of its leash, choking and confused.

“You want to sell his coat, and I want him to have yours. So switch.”

Thomas and the sunken eyed robber shared an equally dubious look before he began carefully pulling off his frock coat. The robber made an unhappy noise and slammed his knife into the side of the coach, startling Thomas, before shrugging out of his own heavy brown overcoat. Then he threw it at Thomas in the most offensive manner.

The one legged man wasn't looking at them though. He was busy appraising the remaining men and throwing a curse at one of them trying to dislodge a wheel from the coach.

“The fuck did I say Morly? you want to roll that down the fucking highway? leave it you dumb-lubber. Cod, get that horse out of the lines.”

“He's stuck good Captain, back legs been crushed I think.”

“Then shoot it.” The one legged man, their captain Thomas presumed, replied and tossed the man one of his many pistols. The robber hesitated only a moment, before he stood and another shot rang out. The horse went still under the harness and its head hit the mud with an awful thunk.

The damp, the fog and the cold and quiet worked under Thomas's exposed shirt sleeves and made him shiver as he passed over his brocade coat to the robber beside him. Judging by the look on the man's face this was not as agreeable a trade as he'd first thought. He yanked his knife from the side of the coach and gave Thomas a look, which suggested he'd have preferred the blade to have been buried in Thomas instead.

Thomas swallowed and clutched the man's long overcoat to his chest. It crackled when it moved, stiff with dirt and... other things.

The bandit who'd shot the horse, Cod, came around the coach and handed the pistol back to the one legged man, spitting on the ground as he did.

“That's sixty pounds, at least, gone to the bottom Captain,” he said, looking back at the dead horse. “Men won't be happy about that.”

“Take it out of my share,” the cripple replied, tearing open a pack of shot powder with his teeth. “I've got what I came for.”

The man was busy priming his pistol, while he balanced on his crutch. So he didn't see the calculating expression that passed over his compatriot's scarred face as Cod looked Thomas over along with the other knife wielding robber. It was far from comforting.

“What's he got that makes giving up sixty pounds so easy?” Cod sneered.

“Nothing that'll be of any value to you,” the one legged man replied smoothly.

“We was all to share equal, we was. That was what you said,” the other robber grumbled, fingering a broken cutlass.

“And you'd like to share the young lord amongst yourselves is that it?” The cripple asked, sounding far too amused in for Thomas's peace of mind.

Cod rubbed at his teeth, and spit, eye's roving from Thomas's buckled shoes to the engraved buttons on his breeches. When Thomas backed away his spine hit the side of the coach and he realized he was cornered. There was nowhere to go but straight through the men in front of him, one of whom was the one legged Captain who had his good side facing Thomas, standing between him and the other robbers.

The Captain casually spun on his crutch, like it was the center of a dial, and then shot Cod clean through the chest with his newly loaded pistol. Thomas fell back, shocked. The sallow faced robber with the knife stumbled away, clutching Thomas's waistcoat as if it were armor that would protect him from a similar blow.

“My god,” Thomas whispered, staring at the blood bubbling up from Cod's dying lips. The Captain turned, and Thomas saw only a sliver of his profile as he addressed the men on the road.

“I trust I've cleared up any misunderstandings in your positions, and that the rest of you didn't forget anything else I said when I brought this to you in the fucking first place.

Now you could try to fight me, maybe kill me and do with that,” he jerked his hat at Thomas, “what you like. One of you poor fucks might even get lucky and find out who to ransom him to, but which one will it be?”

He stuffed the pistol into his belt with his free hand, and then pulled a wicked looking dagger from the sash under his coat, handling the blade with ease.

“Because there'll be only one man left standing on this road if you try for me lads." The Captain warned. "Do you want to bet your life that it'll be you?” he looked straight at the robber with Thomas's coat, “or you Morly?” he looked at the man still squatting by the coach wheel. “Or you George, Puddy?”

No one moved. Cod gave a final gurgle and died staring up at the one legged man like he'd seen god, and found him terrifying.

Smoke from the pistol trailed around them, curling through these black, unspeakable deeds. The men backed away, one after another from their crippled leader, and returned to pilfering the coach with cautious fingers. Occasionally they cast looks over their shoulders, but they all left their fellow in the mud where he'd landed, with the dead servants.

The Captain sheathed his knife and began priming the pistol again. For a moment Thomas thought he was going to be the next victim of that cold barrel, but when he looked up and met those pale eyes again the man winked at him. Thomas gasped, and cold, foul air rushed into his deprived lungs, which he hadn't realized had gone still.

“Strip him.” The Captain ordered.

“I—what?” Thomas was not coherent.

“That coat isn't enough. Take his clothes,” the man jerked his scarf covered chin at the body. “Put them on, and give the rest of yours to the men.”

Thomas blinked, dumbfounded, at the corpse at his feet. The Captain unhooked a ramrod and began jamming a new shot down the barrel of his gun. After a moment Thomas knelt and began gingerly unbuttoning the dead man's jacket.

He'd never touched a dead body before. It was still warm, and the eyes were open, staring up at them both. With every button Thomas undid he expected the man to blink, gasp and sit up again, but he never moved, and when a fly landed on his pupil Thomas flapped a hand, shooing the pest away. Then he and glanced at the one legged man above him before quietly shutting Cod's dead eyes.

Stripping Cod was hard and demeaning work. The limbs were heavy, and cumbersome and he had to roll the corpse over the ground to get the poor man's garments off. He found himself apologizing under his breath when he pushed the body onto its front to remove the jacket and shirt. He worried the man couldn't breath... before he remembered Cod was dead.

There was no dignity for a dead man in having his breeches clumsily pulled down his knees Thomas thought as he worked.

When the body was finally bare, Thomas looked up at the one legged man for instruction, or some chance of reprieve, but there was no give in the eyes nestled between hat and scarf. So Thomas braced himself and began the next indignity; undressing himself on an open road in full view of some of the roughest men he'd ever seen, in broad daylight.

The fog did little to hide him, but he took some small comfort in being able to dress piece by piece, unlike the poor corpse at his feet. He left his shirt on while he pulled on Cod's breeches, hiding his assets as much as he could.

He had driven past enough crowds of the lower sort to expect some jeers and whistles at his expense, but no one said a word. When Thomas dared to glance at the robbers under the cover of changing his fine white shirt for a dark, rough green one, he found none of them were even looking at him.

The silence was terrible.

One of the robber's, Puddy he thought, approached the Captain as Thomas finished pulling on the dead Cod's boots. He took Thomas's neatly folded clothes and then handed the Captain a small bag which jingled, and had a very fine watch chain dangling out of it. The One Legged man tucked that into his coat and Puddy backed away, tipping a finger in salute as he went.

“You,” the one legged man finally addressed Thomas. “Come with me.”

Then he turned and began hobbling away from the wrecked coach. The other robbers were leading the remaining three horses into the fields, each in a different direction, the fog swallowing them all until only the jingle of bit and bridle and the stamp of hooves remained.

They left so suddenly in fact that it took a moment for Thomas to realize he was, essentially, free.

He was unchained, and alone with just the remains of his father's coach, and the one legged man. _He_ had stopped a little ways away from Thomas, with his good hand resting on the low wall separating the road from the south fields.

“You're considering your options,” he said in that same elegant voice, which seemed so at odds with the ugly scene between them. “You're thinking you could walk away right now, and who's to stop you but me? You're running the odds in your head, and counting how likely it is I'll miss shooting you, or the pistol wont fire.” The hat raised slightly as the man looked up at the gray sky. “You don't want stay where you are, and you don't dare come with me and risk being ransomed. There's no way to know when a marshal might come along either.”

“You didn't do this for a ransom,” Thomas said, and stepped delicately around Cod's body.

“Are you sure?”

“Are you going to stop me if I leave?”

The one legged man looked away, and instead of answering the question, he said “there'll be scavengers here soon.”

“Animals?” Thomas croaked, alarmed.

“Men and women. You won't want to be here when they come to clear the rest of that,” the man waved at the scene.

“There isn't anything left to steal,” Thomas frowned, looking at the wreckage and the pale naked bodies of servants and robbers which were spread out like worms after a flood

“There's always something.” The man replied, and started limping away again, calling over his shoulder. “You'd best make up your mind up before then.”

Thomas pressed a hand over his mouth and looked at it all; the ruined coach, the grey fields, the looming shadow Bethlem in the distance and the retreating back of his rescuer stomping down the road with an uneven gate.

Finally, not entirely sure if it was due to the blow to his head, or the cold scene of murder he'd just witnessed, he wrapped the stiff overcoat tightly around himself, hugging both arms to his chest, and followed his ghost into the fog.


	4. Chapter 4

They walked east. His rescuer hobbled down the road at a fantastic gate for a disabled fellow, and left deep holes in the mud from his crutch. He sang softly as they went. That same low sad song Thomas had heard before, which made the dreary road even bleaker.

“I’ll do as much for my true love, as any a young girl may. I’ll sit and mourn all on her grave, for twelve months and a day.”

The whole world fell away from them in the fog, and he wondered if he turned back if he would find the wrecked carriage again. He wasn't sure he could and so Thomas shivered, breathed the cold stink of the fields, and kept following his one legged friend.

Then men began to appear in the fog.

They emerged slowly and collided together like floating rubbish bumping against moldy pilings in a harbor. Two of them met at the wall. They whispered together and coins changed hands, and then they were kissing, right there in the open with hands moving under coats.

The fog did nothing to hide their ... amorous congress, and Thomas only realized he'd stopped to stare in the most impolitic way when his ghost banged his crutch impatiently on the ground.

Thomas hurried past the the groping men.

“Where are we?” he whispered, when he caught up with his rescuer.

“Sodomites walk,” the man answered.

How terribly appropriate, Thomas thought as the smog grew thicker, and the fumbling men faded behind them.

Thomas wondered if that was how the spirits of Sorrows, and Heartaches and others had appeared to Aeneas, or Orpheus when he followed Eurydice to the underworld. He tucked his chin down, in the usual “unbecoming sign of stubbornness”, and marched forward thinking that _he_ would not succumb to doubt like Orpheus had when the fate of _his_ lovers were at stake.

He wondered what they were doing right then. James must have returned from Admiralty by now and heard what had happened at dinner; that Thomas had been committed. He would be furious. He would be boiling with it. Miranda... she would be moving.

London society was her arena and she knew everyone. She would be counseling James on what to do, and who to speak to on their behalf. She had known something was coming. Thomas admitted he had been foolish to dismiss her fears. That was his mistake.

His father would never, he knew, admit to the real reason, political or otherwise that he'd committed Thomas. His own reputation and pride would never survive it. So he had to believe that whatever story was going to be concocted would not be too awful.

Miranda was still Lady Hamilton. She had their money and their connections. She would be all right, surely, whatever his father's opinions of her. He had to believe that. He had to believe she and James would be alright, and when he managed to return to his house they would be there, waiting for him, together.

To think otherwise would ruin him.

Still, fear gnawed at him. Fear that this was more then a counter move in the political game. That the foundation he'd been standing on was not bedrock, but thin and weak as paper and as likely to collapse as a delicate house of cards. Fear that he had gambled with something dear, in a most egregious way. He was forced to wonder, if he did not return soon, how much influence Miranda would be able to maintain without him.

It was a horrible thought that was quickly joined by an equally horrid stench.

The smell drifted back towards him, and grew stronger the further he and the one legged man went. Thomas brought a sleeve to his nose and almost tripped as the road came to an abrupt end in a neat little yard, surrounded by dark teetering brick walls looming out of the mist.

The stench was absolutely horrendous. For all he was used to a certain smell around the coach house and privy box at the back of his home, and the usual horse offal in the streets this was something else entirely.

“Oh, we can’t go in there,” he protested, looking up at the twisted buildings over his coat sleeve. They were little more then shacks and dunghills with shadows moving among them, as bent and twisted as their homes. A rangy dog with one eye, and a maggot half buried in red sore on its rib, lay wheezing on a stoop.

The one legged man did not stop.

“Wait, wait!” Thomas insisted and snagged the man's sleeve just before he lurched out of reach. The man turn back with a question in his eye and Thomas tried to find some way to word his concern about all this.

After a moment of searching Thomas's face his rescuer quietly untied the scarf from around his neck. Then, without a word, his ghost reached up, and Thomas was startled to realize he was the taller of the two of them as the One Legged Man wrapped his sash around Thomas’s head, covering his nose and mouth expertly. The cloth smelled like salt and seaweed, and a musky sweat which was sweet and not unpleasant. It buffered him considerably from the stench of the place.

He could see his ghost clearly for the first time too. He was much older then Thomas expected. Long silver hair, half tied back from his face, fell down his shoulders with curls that put the wigs of fashion to absolute shame. A white beard jutted from his chin like the jaw of the devil, and a wicked little smirk teased his curling mustache.  

Thomas estimated the man was of an age with his own father, and he'd been burnt and wrinkled by weather, but the lines were more pleasant on him then the Earl. Perhaps he simply wore them better. Poor and crippled, and yet showing more life in one little finger than Alfred Hamilton did in his whole soul. Uncharitable as that thought was. It was hard to imagine his father ever shooting down a moving carriage and walking off with its stolen cargo on two legs, much less one.

“Who are you?” he asked in wonder, the question slightly muffled by the scarf. It was very rude, but he suspected this was not a man who cared about manners any more than he cared about shooting men in the chest.

A great big smile broke out on the one legged man’s face, sending his wrinkles dancing in mirth.

“Today, and to you,” he replied. “I am a very good friend. You can call me Flint.”

“Captain Flint?” Thomas asked, recalling how the robbers had addressed him.

The smile stalled, before turning into a smaller, quieter thing hiding in his silver beard.

“Mr Flint will do me fine, Mr. Barlow.”

“I beg your pardon?” Thomas frowned, confused.

“You'll be answering to Mr. Thomas Barlow, tradesman, until this business is done.”

“Oh, yes, I suppose I see the merit in that, but--”

“Come on, we have city to disappear into. You’ll get used to the smell.” Mr. Flint slapped his back and then walked gamely past the dog, into a narrow lane between two shacks.

“I don’t think anyone should _have_ to get used to it,” Thomas mumbled, following him into the dark and holding the long sash tighter over his nose.

“You’ll get no arguments from anyone down here on that point.” Mr. Flint replied, cheerily sidestepping a suspicious steaming pile, and then kicking another out of their way with his crutch as easily as if it were a real leg. “If you find a way to get rid of it, and give us all some clean water that won’t kill you dead, you’ll have the loyalty of an entire city at your disposal.”

“May I ask where we're going?”

Thomas struggled to keep up, which was increasingly difficult in the tight street. The further they went the more packed it became, with men and women shoving their way along.

It became so close that Thomas had to turn sideways to get through them and he was baffled as to how Mr. Flint walked with such ease, since none of them got out of _his_ way either. Though once or twice he saw the crutch stick out and trip a man who'd then fall against stone or wooden walls, cursing.

“Somewhere to weather the night,” Mr Flint replied to his question.

Thomas tried get a better answer than that, but Flint was not inclined to share. So to distract himself from the appalling conditions, which he would be bringing up in parliament the first chance he got, Thomas tried instead to build a rapport with the man.

After all, it simply felt absurd to stand on ceremony and refer to each other as Mr. Flint and Mr. Barlow when this man had seen him half naked.

Flint did not give up his name easily and Thomas would have felt he was straining the bounds of decency with Mr. Flint's constant demurring, except that the man seemed to be enjoying it. So Thomas spent the walk teasing a given name from his rescuer cum captor. Mr Flint provided increasingly ridiculous names, such Kwaku and Barbecue, before finally offering the simple name of John. Named for St. John he said, patron saint of liars, thieves and murderers.

“John of God offers patronage to booksellers,” Thomas rebuked lightly, and then added more seriously, “and hospitals.”

John hummed. “Would you call that providence? Or just bad luck?”

“Irony, perhaps,” Thomas replied.

“As it happens, I actually was named for a saint. John the Silent,” John's cheerful tone dropped a little as he said this. “I suspect they were hoping the good hermit would rub off on me and I'd shut the fuck up.” Then he grinned back at Thomas. “They were sorely disappointed.”

“I see.”

Thomas was bemused but tried to remain polite. He was also now thoroughly lost in the maze of hovels, and John continued to chatter as he lead them to a house with dirty windows, crammed on a corner between a publisher and a brothel.

“Here we are, quick as you like now, inside.” John pulled open an ugly wooden door with a missing plank covered in rags. Thomas made a face as it was shoved at him, and fumbled with the broken handle. John paid two pennies to a man inside and then lead the way into a narrow room which was awash in the warm haze of tobacco smoke and candle light.

It was a poor establishment. The poorest he'd ever been in and Thomas peered around with interest at the crowded tables. Men of different stations sat together sharing pipes and coffee, and burying their noses in Loyd's List and Mr Defoe's latest edition of The Review. Sailors sat beside lawyers, bakers, and bookkeepers. A man in rags was fiercely arguing with a moderately dressed Wig about taxes.

The blending of class gave the cramped room a chaotic look, which was heightened by the number of women mixing with the men. Rather unusual for a coffeehouse. They were not known for welcoming the fairer sex,  which was something Miranda had roundly criticized on many occasions.

It was one of the reasons they had formed his salon in fact. Moving their discussions to the west parlor in their home allowed Miranda's swift and unrepentant mind to have as full a voice as his own. Along with Mrs. Edwards and Mrs. Poole, and Miss Gladstone.

In fact, if it hadn't been for the stench and the amount of excrement he had quite literally slogged through to get here, Thomas would have enjoyed introducing Miranda to this place. They could dress down and make an evening of it. As it was, it would have to be a story to tell her when they reunited; James and Miranda and himself. The three of them.

Consumed as he was in imagining the end of his current separation and the balm of James voice and Miranda's delicate hands, Thomas was well into the crowd before he noticed another detail which set this house apart from its neighbors.

Two men were threading their fingers together over a pint of beer in an extremely intimate manner, their noses almost touching as they whispered together. Nearby two women, one in the other's lap conversed on some mystery of knitting that Thomas could not fathom. They kissed as he passed their table, full on the lips, with tongue. It was nothing like the rushed and uncouth gropings he'd seen on Sodomites Road. This was gentle. A kiss with familiarity and easy affection and the weight of history behind it.

Even more arresting then their kiss, was the house's utter indifference to the display. In fact half or more of the patrons seemed paired up in such ways. He even saw a triumvirate in the corner; two women and man dressed as one.

His father considered coffeehouses to be hotbeds of sedition and degeneracy at the best of times. _This one_ would have made the Earl turn red with umbridge but John, he noted, seemed to fit right in. The old man navigated the lovers as easily as he had the street corners outside. He even smiled at one or two of them before glancing back at Thomas.

“You look like you've seen a ghost,” John chuckled. “Surely you've been to a Molly House before. Lieutenant McGraw can't have been your only companion.”

Thomas tripped on his feet, disturbing a pair of burly, unwashed men from their amorous embrace. He apologized profusely, backing away from their blackened teeth and unsmiling eyes, before glaring at John.

“You are extraordinarily well versed in my affairs sir,” he bit out through the scarf. “Exactly how long were you watching me?”

A wicked look skipped through John's eyes.

“Are you sure it was you I was watching?” he teased back. Thomas opened his mouth the reply, head spinning with that allusion, but he was interrupted by another loud voice punching through the din of the house before he could form an answer.

“What's this?” A brown woman, of indeterminate age and uncompromising wrinkles elbowed her way between him and John. She looked Thomas over in a way that suggested she was far from impressed, and then rounded on his white haired friend. John anticipated her.

“Sancha! Light of my life!” he beamed and snatched up her hand to kiss it. She swatted John across the face with a rag.

“I'm light of fucking funds since your peg leg left my door. Who the fuck is this?” She waved at Thomas.

“Oh, friend of the family,” John winked at him.

“Humph, he don’t look like much.” Sancha crossed her arms.

“He'll surprise you.”

John reached into his coat and pulled out the pocket watch of the Earl's dead manservant, and carefully placed it in Sancha's hand, curling her fingers over it. Her expression lightened considerably as she looked it over and John propped himself against a nearby chair, taking some weight off his crutch.

Thomas watched, and silently wondered how many years the Earl's man had set aside his pennies to save up for that little luxury. It didn't seem right that something which had taken so long to acquire for one man, could be stolen so quickly by another. What did that say about England, he wondered, and felt the need to sit down when his head throbbed.

“Is the Captain still here?” John asked Sancha, very seriously.

“The devil himself couldn't move that one,” she muttered, stuffing the watch into a pocket of her apron. “Ate all my seed bun, which you'll be paying for.”

“I'm sorry, who's here?” Thomas asked, blinking past the ache in his head.

John turned his grin on him with such focus that Thomas was reminded of young Fitzroy using a lens he'd found in his fathers study to burn up ants on the windowsill when they were boys. Fitzroy had always been a lout.

“Would you like to meet the patron of our venture?” John asked.

Dear god yes, Thomas thought, relief pouring through him at the thought of finally sitting across from John Flint's master and getting some answers. Such as why he'd set the man to spy on his house, and who exactly John was spying on if not Thomas.

It must have shown on his face because John slapped him on the shoulder, rather harder than Thomas thought necessary and lowered himself into the empty chair he'd been leaning on.

“Sancha, would you bring the Captain round, and a bowl of gin and some coffee, please?”

Sancha gave him a hard look but after a moment she nodded and disappeared into the crowd. John propped his crutch against the table, and worked his arm around a bit, loosening stiff muscles. Thomas looked around, discretely, before joining him at the table.

Sancha returned quickly with a tray holding two rough clay cups, a bowl reeking of gin and a very large, very green bird. It was quite exotic looking and the moment John saw it he lost the grimace that had been creeping into his wrinkles and turned positively doting.

“Ah,” he crowed, reaching out. The large bird waddled across the table to his outstretched hand and nipped him delicately on the knuckles, cooing before turning a large black eye on Thomas. “This is the Captain,” John announced proudly.

Thomas blinked at the bird, and wondered if slamming his head into the coach had done more damage then he realized.

“That's a parrot,” he finally said, just to clarify.

“A green Macaw to be exact, and almost two hundred years old. Say hello Captain.”

“Pieces of eight!” it flapped its wings.

Thomas was glad he was sitting down, and leaned back in his chair as he fought the throbbing in his head. If he'd been a few years younger he would have made some quip about not appreciating being made a fool of with that suggestion about patrons, but... well, what was the point. It would merely cause John to laugh more. Such was always the way of pranksters.

He would simply have to take this to mean that John had no intention of revealing who employed him. For the moment at least. Thomas hurt too much to argue. Now that he was sitting every limb and joint in his body seemed to decide it was an appropriate time to dissolve in a trembling mess of pain.

Sancha slid the steaming bowl of gin towards him, and he exercised considerable skill in statecraft by not wrinkling his nose. He still had John's scarf around his face of course, which helped with the smell and hiding most of his expression. He was not sure if he dared remove it.

“Thank you,” John murmured and Sancha left, throwing a rag on the table between the two of them. Then they were left alone, staring at each other over the Captain's feathered back. The bird hissed at Thomas and John chuckled, as if the bird had said something witty and brushed its feathered head.  

“Don't take it to heart,” John said with a look that spoke of hordes of private memories. “She's never took to her predecessor either.”

Then he crooked his fingers at Thomas in a demanding way, and he was complying before he'd really thought about it. There was something magnetic about the old man. Or perhaps the blow to the head really had addled him, but one moment Thomas was sitting back in his chair, and the next he was leaning over the table while John carefully unwrapped the scarf from his head.

At least, Thomas comforted himself, John didn't seem worried about anyone recognizing the Lord Hamilton.

He winced when the cloth pulled at his skin and hair, but John was exceedingly gentle as he peeled it away; dabbing with the hot gin soaked rag where blood had stuck the scarf to his skull. It hurt, and Thomas pressed his lips together, breathing through his nose as this strange old man cleaned his wound and face. As if he were a boy, come home from scraping his knees in the mulberry bushes.

The gin slowly turned pink from blood and Thomas fingered the bowl, watching it swirl with every dip of the rag.

He felt adrift on a sea of impossible moments which grew stranger the farther he traveled from his drawing room. He half wondered if his arrest at the dinner table was the result of some bad wine, and he would wake up any moment in his study, with a crick in the neck and a story to tell Miranda about the glorious dream he'd had of his One Legged Ghost.

“I don’t wish to seem ungrateful,” Thomas murmured as John peered at the wound on his head, “but why?”

“Why what?” John dropped the rag into the gin bowl, and shooed the Captain away from it when the bird sidled up to the stuff.

“Why do all this?” Thomas asked as John wrung out the rag.

“I want you to live,” John answered simply.

Thomas didn't know what to make of that.

“Was there some doubt that I would?” he tried to ask with humor but it fell somewhat flat between them when John wouldn't look at him. His entire attention was on the rag he was now folding neatly into a little square, with as much care as Mrs. Mapleton treated the Hamilton's lace napkins. Thomas swallowed and pushed aside a deeply unsettling feeling.

“Your father sent you to Bethlem,” John finally said, as if that was answer enough. Which it may well have been.

“Yes.” Thomas sat back. “Like a child being put in the corner, to suffer for what my father believes is hubris, before he no doubt offered to secure my release on the condition I renounce all the ideals that lead me there in the first place.”

John scoffed. “He doesn’t know you very well, does he?”

“He know what he wants to, and quite a few things he doesn't want to. I expect I would have been there some months before he asked for my repentance. It doesn't matter really, because he won either way. The scorn of my peers will take years to overcome after this. Years which I might have spent pursuing greater ends, will now be spent making up for lost time. Everything I've strived in the past year is effectively ruined.”

“That's not what happens.”

“I beg you pardon?”

John still would not look at him. “Perhaps your health is weaker than you think. Perhaps they were more brutal, or you're simply more stubborn then the Earl anticipated, but you died in that place.”

His words left a chill like a cold sea wind battering at Thomas's heart.

“Died?” he croaked.

“Mmm,”

“As in...” Thomas shook his head, and began again trying to laugh a little. “You say that as though it's already happened.”

John said nothing. He merely dipped the folded rag into the hot gin, and pressed it under his own coat, to the shoulder which had been using his crutch. A soft groan escaped his lips, which were pressed tight in denial of the pain John was clearly suffering.

Thomas thought about the men he'd seen huddled in corners on the street outside, muttering to the air with clouded eyes and shaking limbs. The mad souls.

He ran a hand over his short hair, careful to avoid the cut on the side, feeling exhausted and undressed without his wig. They hadn't allowed him time to take one when they pulled him from his dinner table. He supposed they had no reason to think he'd need it. They probably would have taken his clothes when he was admitted to the hospital anyway, and knowing his father it would have been a most expedient process. He doubted he would have had time to feel undressed there, before harsher things were inflicted on him.

He shivered and looked around the coffeehouse at a pair of men who were sharing a cup. One of them was fingering his companion's beard with an utterly besotted look on his face.

“So, what now?” Thomas asked.

“That's up to you,” John said with a grimace, pulling the rag back from his shoulder and dipping it in the gin.

Not a captive then, Thomas thought.

“I need to go to The Strand,” he said, folding his hands and carefully testing the boundaries of his situation.

“That's not a good idea.”

It was not a warning, as Thomas expected. It sounded more like a mild opinion, as if he had proposed sticking celery in his tea; a distasteful experience John would advise against but not something that would cause him to bring out the heavy artillery.

“And this is?” Thomas countered, looking pointedly at another two men who were making their way upstairs with hands in each other's pockets.

“This is the safest place in London right now--” John squeezed the gin rag and then slid it under his coat again, rubbing at his shoulder. “No one will give you up to the Marshall here. They'd have to explain where they saw you and what they were doing there themselves, and everyone of them knows that'll lead to a short drop and a sudden stop.”

“Never the less,” Thomas insisted quietly. “There are people I need to see, arrangements to be made.”

He would have to choose very carefully who to approach of course, if he could not reach Miranda. Someone who would look the other way while he was dragged about in a public scandal might be more willing to help privately, if they could keep his father from finding out. Alfred Hamilton did not suffer opposition and Thomas had been growing increasingly vocal about his.

Peter would help, he was sure, but that gave Thomas pause too. Peter had become a close friend in the past few months. He had seen first hand the maneuvers Thomas and his father played out in parliament. He'd helped craft more then a few of them. He, more than anyone in London, might question why The Earl chose Bethlem.

Thomas did not want to have that discussion with Peter. Or with anyone.

“Well, there's nothing more to be done today,” John said. “The sun'll be setting soon, and you don't want to be walking these streets in the dark. Drink, eat, and enjoy being a free man. Whatever comes tomorrow, will be dealt with tomorrow.”


	5. Chapter 5

It turned out that John had already taken a gable room in the coffeehouse. It was very small, and smelled of damp. There were cabinets in Thomas's home bigger then that whole room.

There was also only one bed in it which John, despite Thomas's normally persuasive arguments, refused to take. Instead he carefully slid down the wall and stretched out over the floor. It was so cramped that he took up the entire space, with his boot shoved up against the closed door and the crown of his head touching the far wall. Thomas could not move without stepping on him somewhere.

He also quickly found that the floor may have been the better option. There was some stone or broken board poking through the mattress, and it dug into his back no matter which way he turned.

It was early still, the sun had only just set by the time they'd finished a small meal and gone up to the second story, but Thomas was aching all over and barely made it up the stairs he was so eager to lie down. At least, he had been eager before he'd known he'd have to do it on a broken pallet.

It also did not escape his notice that John was having a difficult time, moving slowly and grimacing. In the end John looked so happy on the floor, with his hat over his face that Thomas didn't have the heart to move him, so he simply surrendered to the awful bed.

There was a small window, very thin with dirty glass, that looked west over the crooked shanties. He could see the black hulk of Bethlem in distance, watching over them like a capricious patron of the outcasts. Thomas stared at it while the din of the street and the house joined forces with his nerves, making sleep impossible.

He could hear banging bed frames, slapping skin and moans of passion through the floor. He spent most of the night listening to men stumble in and out of those lower rooms, and every grunt and smack made him feel smaller and more lonely, while Bethlem stared at him like some baleful, knowing eye.

Sometime in the wee hours, when the house finally went quiet, he did fall asleep and when he woke again he had a crick in his neck, sore back and aching legs. He was reaching for the bell to ring the servants for some hot water before he rolled off the shallow cot and the hard floor hit his knees; reminding him that there were no servants to ring for.

Then the stench hit him all over again, rot and mold and urine, and he gagged and scrabbled around blindly until he found John's scarf and pressed it over his nose. It helped only a little, and Thomas breathed shallowly until he could do so without wanting to vomit.

How did people live like this? It was one thing to know the state of these poor neighborhoods academically, it was quite another to be in them. He was not sure which had grown more since yesterday. His respect for human endurance, or his disgust at the conditions they were forced to endure.

The light was weak and grey, and he could not tell if it was early or late in the day but when he looked around he was startled to find John missing. He wondered, for a horrible moment, if John had left him. Then a rustle drew his eyes to the Green Macaw, preening its feathers as it stood on the one remaining bedpost. It hissed at him.

The house was still quiet, and it seemed unnaturally still after the constant noise he'd endured in the night, but then John's voice drifted up from the stairwell. The bird settled and Thomas sagged in relief at the sound of John's singing, his words punctuated by the stomp of his crutch as he dragged himself closer.

“And when twelve months and a day had passed, the ghost did rise and speak. Why do you sit all on my grave, and will not let me sleep?”

Thomas sat up with a groan, every joint aching. The door swung open and John blew in like a west wind, hands and crutch and coat bringing light and noise with him into the stuffy room.

“You look awful.” John declared, before tossing a lumpy bag at Thomas. It hit his stomach and punched the air right out of him.

“I didn't sleep,” Thomas confessed after getting his breath back. He then cautiously opened the bag and found several loafs of dark brown bread and a bottle of beer inside.  He rubbed his abused belly and tore off a small chunk of bread, nibbling at it delicately.

“Well, London's a fucking mess,”  John griped cheerfully. “Everyone's stirred up about some lord's carriage being robbed last night. It's all they can talk about. The local watch found wreckage in the Moorfields and that news must have reached the right people because there's a beadle on every fucking corner. Even I got pulled up before them, can you imagine? Me? Old one legged John, who can hardly limp my way across the Hoarse Yard, having something to do with that nonsense?”

“Hard to believe,” Thomas mumbled in a deadpan and pulled himself off the floor with some effort. He then gently closed the door which John had left open, giving them some illusion of privacy. He had no misconceptions, after the listening to other men yelling “fuck” all night, that this would provide any real privacy but he felt a need for the appearance of it.

John sat on the end of the cot, and held onto his crutch with one hand while extending a finger to his bird with the other.

“Have you thought of what you want to do now?” John asked him, while the Captain played with his rings.

Thomas popped the cork on the beer and took a deep drink, grimacing at the taste. “I spent most of the night thinking about it, but I've yet to arrive at any sound plan.” He frowned at John then. He was obviously a resourceful old man. He wondered-- “What would you do in my position?”

“Me? I would take the first ship out of London and never look back.”

“You would just... run away?” Thomas could not fathom such a thing.

“That is the main benefit, yes.” John smirked up at him and Thomas scoffed.

“I can't simply leave London. I live here. Miranda is here, and James is now too.”

John shrugged. “You asked. The most sensible thing to do is break port.”

“I've never been accused of being sensible.” Thomas mumbled, half to himself and paced up to the small window, looking out at the Moorfields.  

“So, what do you intend to do?” John asked.

Thomas sighed. “Well, if I return home there's nothing to say my father wont have me sent right back to the hospital again. If I send any letters to Miranda or James, they may end up in my fathers hands too and then we're just mired in the same problem, and--” he threw up his hands, feeling useless. “I have nothing on my own. Except my name and reputation, and that is not going to be worth very much at the moment. As much as I would like to handle this privately I simply can't see a way to do it.”

“Then don't.”

“Don't what?

“Handle it alone.”

Thomas ran a thumb over his lips, thinking. “Well, there is someone. He might be able to reach Miranda without suspicion. He could certainly get discreet lodgings and help with arranging whatever must be done next in...” He glanced at the closed door. “The appropriate avenues.”

“Why do I get the feeling you aren't talking about me?” John chuckled.

Thomas gave him a look. “Well you're not exactly discreet.”

John laughed and Thomas looked back out the window as if it might spur his mind to answers for the whole predicament.

“So what would this man's name be then?” John prompted him.

“Peter.” Thomas supplied, distracted, and left off his friend's titles in deference to listening ears. “Peter Ashe.”

Before yesterday he would not have minded who was listening. He still did not believe he had anything to be ashamed of, but after everything that'd happened he was forced to concede that, in Miranda's words, a little prudence might be called for. Just for awhile. Nor was he sure how much he wanted to explain to John, no matter what the strange old man seemed to know already.

John was silent for a long moment and finally just repeated, “Ashe.”

He made a face as if he were turning Peter's name over and wasn't sure if he liked the taste of it.

“Yes. The trouble is,” Thomas confessed, “that he's already been taken into our confidence.”

“And you think he's betrayed you.” John nodded.

Thomas stopped, blinked, gaped a little.

“No, of course not.” He declared with absolute confidence, baffled as to how John had leaped to that conclusion. John frowned as if he was having same trouble with Thomas.

“Then I don't understand. Most men consider a friend in confidence to be the best sort to turn to.”

The tone of John's voice suggested he thought most men were idiots and Thomas chose not to probe that particular sentiment at the moment. Picking his battles as it were. John, he thought, was promising to be a singularly odd individual. Instead he tried to explain.

“Every family has its scandals. Mine are no more interesting then any other. They're rather common in fact. I was rarely bothered by them. I knew what was true and what what wasn't. More importantly I knew what mattered and what didn't and I never thought that anyone with sense would care about such things anyways.” He took a breath. “That doesn't make discussing them any more appealing.”

“I didn't think of you as a man to shy from uncomfortable conversations.”

“I'm not. I wouldn't have got through a day in ... business... if I was, but Peter.” He shook his head. “Well, there'll be no sparing my father's part in this. Its one thing to take opposing sides on a bill, its another to take a side on family matters and its harder sharing such things when someone's opinion really matters to you. Peter's been a good friend.”

John raised an eyebrow.

Thomas held up his hands. “Not _that_ kind of friend.” He smiled, thinking of his euphemism for James and the kind of house he now stood in. “But Peter has been an invaluable ally. I've relied on his good sense and connections and I,” he cleared his throat. “I confess myself unsettled by the idea that I seem to have no one but Peter to turn to. I used to have so many friends.” He looked down at his scuffed, borrowed boots. “I thought they were friends.”

Then again, he'd not had time for much of anyone since James, and he'd become so focused on the pardon measure. He'd not spoken to any of them really, since Church and Westley and Hobbs and the others left his Salon. He'd made no efforts or overtures after that disappointment. Could he really claim surprise then, at losing touch over the last three months?

He looked around the dim, ugly little room, which was as cold as the street outside and as cheerless as a prison gate.

“Well.” Thomas straightened, and shook himself. “I'd best be off. Thank you, John, for all your help. I'll never-- what are you doing?”

“Coming with you, naturally.”

Thomas was not expecting that. Somewhere in the back of his mind he'd built John into a temporary character. Someone to direct the hero at a cross in the road and listen to his confessions, but he'd not thought for a moment that John would stay with him past this. Not once John implied he was free to go about his business.

“Oh.” Thomas didn't know what to say. “Are you sure? It's a very long walk.”

John pulled his crutch under his arm, settled his bird on his shoulder and stomped out of the room, saying “fuck the walk,” and that they'd better get a damn cart ride.

Thomas's heart warmed, like a pair of knuckles held to a beautiful hearth fire, and he followed John out with a smile, closing the door of the cold little room behind them.

~

They caught a ride on a goose cart heading out of the East-End. The driver was happy to take a few tokens from John and not ask where they came from. Though the Captain nearly had a brawl with the larger birds and got the three of them pecked back into the street.

John had to hug his Parrot to his chest to keep it from attacking, and Thomas kept thinking how much Miranda would be laughing if she could see him now. It was good to think of her laughing. It was good to think she'd soon be in his arms again.

John had not been exaggerating about the watch though. The street was buzzing with gossip and John pointed out the corner watchmen as they passed, while poor children dodged around them and picked horse dung off the streets. They lobbed it at each other like snowballs and sometimes their small, manure streaked faces stared up at Thomas as he rolled by, as if they could sense he did not belong among them.

It took them some time to reach Peter's home. Along with the cart ride, which Thomas was happy to oblige in to save his friends leg despite the geese (awful birds, he planned to stop eating them), John also insisted on taking a circuitous route to get there.

After the cart dropped them off at the fork between Butchers Row and the Strand, John hopped into the twisting back streets off the main road, saying they shouldn't been seen walking that high class avenue. He made Thomas wear both his hat and scarf again, and lead the way through alleys connecting the rear of many of the tall homes.

It was strange seeing his neighbors from such a direction. They looked so different from the back end that Thomas did not even realize when they'd reached Peter's home until they stopped in a small cobbled yard.  It was indistinguishable, to his eyes, from all the other yards with stray chickens and feather down.

John directed him to the steaming door of a kitchen. Then he talked their way inside with a winning smile, and a story about how he'd have been a poor christian to leave Mr Barlow lost on the street when he had such urgent letters for Lord Ashe.

A new footman to the Hamilton's Mr Barlow was, taken on as charity by Lord Thomas himself not a day ago. He hadn't even had time to get fitted for proper attire before some great hullabaloo shook their household and would Miss Hill, the kitchen maid, mind terribly fetching a footman so Mr Barlow could deliver the Earl's message?

Then they were inside, and warming their toes by the fire with a cup of tea and breakfast biscuits in hand. Thomas was dizzy, and it was on the tip of his tongue to ask what John intended to say to footman, but in the next moment he was there, and it was too late to intercede.

Thomas stood slowly as the man entered the kitchen. He recognized him. He had served Thomas many times when he called on the Lord and Lady Ashe. Pick, that was his name. Samuel Pick. He saw the moment Mr. Pick recognized him too. Wigless and in shabby, rank clothing with a cut gracing his head, he was a far cry from the lord Mr Pick had poured wine and cut lace pancakes for on so many mornings.

Mr. Pick's eyes widened, and his chin wobbled. For a moment, Thomas worried he would blurt out something in offense at seeing Thomas in the kitchen, and in such poor condition so he quietly laid a hand on the man's shoulder, and lowered his voice.

“It's good to see you Mr. pick. How is your family, are they all well?”

“Yes, sir,” Mr. Pick blinked, thrown off his course, and Thomas caught John giving him a curious look from where he'd propped himself against the hearth.

“And little Clara, is she crawling yet?”  Thomas asked, softly pulling them away from the kitchen maid who was gaping at John's parrot.

“Nearly walking now sir, and giving her mother a fright almost every day.” Mr. Pick replied with a wavering smile, his shock giving way to pleasure at the compliment of Thomas's attention and the pride of a man with a new family.

“That's wonderful to hear. Please relay my compliments. Now I have some very urgent business with Lord Ashe,” Thomas said, taking up John's story in a moment, though he wished he didn't need it and could simply walk upstairs to his friend and address Peter himself.

Mr. Pick was more then willing to help, and urged Thomas to follow him into the east parlor. The one which had the worst light in late Autumn and was the least used this time of year. Mr. Pick would fetch Lord Ashe directly he said, and left with an apprehensive look at John, who had followed them both and was closing the shutter's on the little room's windows.

Thomas stood by the small parlor fire as they waited, too conscious of the rotten stink of his clothes to take a seat and dirty Peter's furnishings. No reason to give the household extra work by leaving them chair's to scrub after all. With luck he would soon be in a hot bath and this coat would be burning with the other household rubbish.

“Will he tell the rest of them?” John asked, leaving the windows and walking carefully around the room, inspecting nooks and crannies. He seemed very tense.

“Mr. Pick?” Thomas frowned. “No, he's an intelligent man, and far too loyal to Peter to go about spreading rumors. That might ruin whatever he believes Peter and I are doing, meeting like this, and it would only upset the household.” Thomas assured him.

“Hmmm.” John did not look convinced but he didn't say anything more about it. Instead he occupied himself looking up at a small painting of an English sloop being tossed about on dark, unfriendly waves.

Thomas was uncomfortably reminded that John had organized the robbery of his father's carriage along with Thomas's escape, and he wondered if he'd just unintentionally put Peter's possessions in a vulnerable position. John's nose was almost touching the paint as he squinted at the work, his parrot mirroring its master's pose, when the door swung open.

Peter rushed through in a welcome cloud of lavender perfume, with Mr Pick at his side. He stopped dead when he saw Thomas, looking as if he'd seen his own personal ghost.

“Peter--” Thomas began, a little nervously, suddenly unsure of his welcome. Unsure if Peter, despite all his support, would wish to manage the situation Thomas was going to put him in. These were extraordinary circumstances. Perhaps Peter would tell him to go and Thomas would have to find some way out of all this on his own.

Then Peter was striding across the room, and without a care for his own satin waistcoat, or propriety, he swept Thomas into a crushing hug. Thomas returned it three fold, clutching at Peter's clean brocade with dirty fingers.

The embrace was all too brief for Thomas, who was shaky, and wanted to throw decorum to the wind, public opinion be damned. But Peter pulled back, and clasped his hands on Thomas's shoulders, giving him a bracing squeeze.

“I thought I'd seen the last of you,” Peter breathed, and then smiled. “I should have known better.”

Behind them John's crutch creaked against the wood floor, and Peter turned to address him, giving the old man a cursory look.

“I must thank you for your service sir, in assisting my friend home.” He turned to the footman. “Mr Pick, would you please escort Lord Hamilton's guest to Mrs. Dillard, and make sure he's given a proper breakfast, and--”

“Oh I'm quite comfortable here, thank you all the same,” John interrupted and stomped over to the padded chair Thomas had been avoiding by the fire. He carefully sat himself down,  and leaned his crutch against it. His bird hopped up onto the backrest and ruffled it's feathers. “Though I wouldn't say no to a nice nice glass of port, and a slice of that gooseberry pie I saw cooling,” John added.

Peter stared, and Mr. pick stared, and Thomas breathed deeply.

It was shocking behavior for a guest and a man of indeterminate station like John. Peter looked as if he'd just come across a rat in his yard, and wasn't sure if it was diseased or not. For Thomas, it oddly reminded him of his father.

The Earl was brusque in a way that bordered on ill-mannered. No one particularly enjoyed having him as a guest, Miranda had informed him, but neither could they refuse him. Because politically speaking Thomas's father had more influence then any other host. He was, simply speaking, too powerful to be crossed over something so slight as manners.

John, sitting there, with elbows on the arms of the chair as if he sat upon a throne had the same look, but there was something darker about it. Something in the curve of his beard and the shadows under his eyes which reminded Thomas of the smoking barrel of his pistol, right after he'd shot one of his men.

Peter's face went through a number of contortions as he looked John, with his weathered hands, ragged blue coat and single muddy boot propped on a cushion stool. The longer the two stared at each other, eye to eye, the more Thomas's nerves began to prickle.

James had told him once about the sense many sailors had for the mood of the sea. There was feeling one got, he'd said, just before a storm. You can feel it in the air, and smell it before it hits. Thomas had never been to sea, but he knew that feeling. One did not spend long in White Hall without learning it. Granted Thomas was usually the one starting a storm, and ordinarily, he would be fascinated to see what ideas sprang forth from the clash of two such different personalities, but at the moment he had more pressing concerns.

“Peter, if you wouldn't mind,” he pressed, drawing his friend's attention away from John's unblinking stare. “It's been a very trying time, for both of us. I hate to impose on you but--”

“Yes, yes of course,” Peter waived him off, stepping smoothly into the role of gracious host, and ordered Mr. Pick to bring up several trays for him and his guests, and put special emphasis on the port wine, with sidelong glance at John who was once more absorbed in the painting above him.

Once Mr. Pick left Peter quietly drew Thomas aside to the shuttered windows.

“Its good to see you, Thomas,” he whispered. “When you were taken yesterday we thought... and then we heard--”

“That my father committed me to Bethlem.” Best get the worst of it out of the way first.

“Yes.” Peter looked ill, and a bit awkward. “Then when he heard this morning that the carriage had been robbed,” he shot a look at John, who took a pipe out of his coat and wiped it with his cuff, appearing unconcerned. “Well, you know your father better then anyone. I'm sure you can imagine.”

“All too well,” Thomas sighed. “Though I would be hard pressed to say if it was the loss of me or the coach that had him turning purple.”

He clamped his lips shut, surprised that such a thing had slipped out. It wasn't like him. John was peering at him from his chair with an amused wrinkle, while Peter was awkwardly silent.

He waited for Peter ask the question that must be on his mind, the one Thomas dreaded answering. Why Bethlem. Why there of all places when his father could simply have placed him under house arrest. He was after all still head of their family. It would have caused a bit of scandal, certainly, but no more then Bethlem would have, whatever story he perpetrated to explain that.

Thomas did not relish exploring that particular piece of history, but Peter surprised him. He didn't even ask. Perhaps, as a true friend, he did not feel the need to pry and Thomas's heart swelled with gratitude at the allowance to leave things unsaid.

“Well, the important thing is you're here now.” Peter declared, clearing his throat.

“And Miranda, and James?”

At the casual use of James's christian name in mixed company Peter cast another sharp look at John. The old man smiled back at him with an air innocence. In fact, Thomas noted, John had been full of nothing but smiles since the robbery. It was such a marked difference from the somber devil he'd met on the highway, it was easy to forget that John was not harmless old man.

Then Peter sighed, drawing Thomas's attention, and said, “I'm sorry Thomas. They're gone.”

“Gone?” Thomas didn't understand. “Gone where?

“I don't know,” Peter looked frustrated. “They wouldn't tell anyone.”

“Well we have to find them!”

“And we will, but first we need to get you somewhere safe out of London, at least for awhile,” Peter squeezed his shoulder again and then took paper and a quill and an inkwell from the nearby table.

A terrible sinking feeling took hold of Thomas as he curled shaky fingers under the overlarge cuffs of his dirty stolen coat.

“Leave London?” he whispered, finding it hard to believe he was having this conversation again, with Peter of all people.

“I have friends in Amsterdam, and Paris,” Peter said.

“Spain,” John suggested from his seat and smiled when Peter cast him a sharp look. “They'd give you sanctuary, possibly, as a fuck you to England.”

“We're at war with Spain,” Peter said very slowly, as if speaking to child. Before dipping his quill in the ink. “And even if we weren't they would want something in return, which you, Thomas, can ill afford right now. Portugal--”

“Won't risk a fight with Spain if the Castile makes an issue of it.” Thomas finished his thought with a shake of his head. “France won't be any different. There's no where in the known world I could go that won't have politics involved Peter, and if I did leave, James would counsel me to avoid the larger players.”

“ _If_ you leave?” Peter prodded Thomas, turning his back on John. “Do you see some other option?”

“I'm not entirely without resources.” He didn't mention how much he was relying on Peter being a resource, “and I'm certainly not one to bow at a little obstacle if I was.”

“I would call this more then a little obstacle, Thomas.”

Mr. Pick returned then with a tray of cold meat, cheese, bread and wine along with tea, and the still cooling gooseberry pie. John helped himself with gusto, filling a large plate while Mr. Pick backed out of the room. The Captain climbed down the side of the chair to pick at John's plate, and he lavished it with attention and crumbs. Thomas was in too much of a state to be very hungry and he turned back to Peter the moment the door shut.

“Anything can be overcome, Peter. You, of all people, must understand I find it difficult to believe that my only option now is to leave everything I have worked for. As if I had to apologize for it all.”

“What about your father?” Peter asked.

“I'll deal with him.”

“How?”

Thomas closed his eyes, pained.

After a moment silent furious thinking on Thomas's part Peter sighed. “You don't know, do you?”

Thomas bit his lip. “I'll think of something. The important thing is that I'm free and we can still act. James and Miranda being out of London may even work in our favor. My father won't have that leverage at his disposal and James has a keen understanding of these things. I believe, I have to believe they're safe and well. You said they left together?” He looked at Peter, he nodded slowly. “And they're not...” Thomas cleared his throat and barely managed to force out the question. “They left freely? They weren't arrested or...”

He trailed off, horrible possibilities spinning in his mind as Peter remained silent with his lips pressed together in a tight line.

“They were given until nightfall, yesterday, to leave London.” Peter finally said. “The Lady Hamilton has been disowned, and Lieutenant McGraw dismissed from the service.”

The world whirled around Thomas.  It was like that old rope swing at school which boys would twist round and round, and then release so you spun so fast that everything became a blur.

“Dismissed?” he repeated in a whisper, shocked. “How?” He felt ill.  

“He's all right--”

“How can he be all right?!”

“They didn't charge him.” Peter assured him. “He was told if he left, quietly and without protest and never returned, that he'd be... forgotten.”

Thomas practically wilted, bracing an arm against the shuttered window frame, and resting his head on his wrist. When he finally raised his eyes he was met with John's steady blue gaze.

“My father,” he murmured answering his own unspoken question. “My father prevented it.”

“Yes,” Peter came forward. “The Earl had to exert considerable influence on the admiralty, but he made certain James was not harmed, or hanged.”

“Why would he do that?” John asked quietly from his chair, swirling the port in Peter's fine glass.

Thomas smiled bitterly, and paced away from the window. “Because he knows he would never get what he wanted from me, if he allowed James to be hung. So I must assume that he accused James of... loving me, and then made sure he survived it.”

Peter looked startled by that admission, glancing between him and his one legged friend again.

John tapped at his wine glass, the silver rings on his fingers making a sharp sound on the rim. “One to rot in Bethlem and one to rot from self loathing. If he was someone else I would almost admire that move. One day, if things proceed as they have been, I may even get to see him answer for it. As it stands, today, I suppose I'll have to be satisfied with seeing his witness bear the consequences.”

John sat back in the chair, as if he were settling in for a show, and there was something truly awful about the look on his face.

“What--”

“What witness?” Thomas asked sharply, implications spinning in his head.

“Tell, me, Lord Ashe,” John fed a crumb of bread to his bird. “Do I owe you congratulations yet, or was there going to be a mourning period so it didn't look too unseemly?”

“Unseemly?”

“Congratulations?”

Peter and Thomas spoke at the same time.

“Is he here now?” John asked, looking up at the ceiling.

“I beg your pardon?” Peter was beginning to look like he had in their Salon when Miranda played a card trick on him, and he kept trying to find a Queen that'd been palmed from the stack of shifting cards.

“Alfred Hamilton.”

“Lord Alfred Hamilton,” Peter corrected sharply, stressing the title, and John _smiled_ before pulling off the cork on the bottle. He poured himself a generous second helping and then toasted Peter.

“Yes, that one. Is he upstairs? Is that how you know what he looked like when he received the news about that _terrible_ robbery? Because he came to deliver it personally?”

“Deliver what?” Peter snapped, beginning to look a little frayed around the edges.

“Your Governorship.” John smirked, and his bird bobbed its head and clacked its beak. “Payment, for services rendered, as I understand. Mr. Lord Governor of the Carolina Colony.”

“I don't know what you're referring to,” Peter answered stiffly.

“Ah, well. You will.” John took a drink. “Give it time.”

Peter clasped his hands behind his back and thrust his chest out. Thomas was standing behind him, and saw how tightly his fists were made.

“You have my thanks, sir,” Peter bit out. “For delivering a dear friend of mine, but I think it's time you left.”

But Thomas had been listening, intently, to the riddling words. It was, he was beginning to suspect, wise to never take your attention off John for very long.

It was possible of course that all this was simply the product of a wandering mind that'd grown too old. After all, last night he'd told Thomas he'd already died, but Thomas also remembered John watching him outside his home. He'd seen the man rally and command hard looking thieves, and not once had his eyes been anything but clear and sharp.

There was nothing of the haze of senility about John, and Thomas was forced to consider how much of the man's apparently senile ramblings might be real secrets he'd learned while spying. That perhaps John chose to couch them in terms of an finished story, or warnings of things to come, simply as a carefully orchestrated drama. Thomas was forced to consider that John's allusions were very real.

“Peter,” Thomas said softly. “What did you do?”

“Thomas, whatever this man has told you--”

“What did you do?”

“You have to understand--”

“ _What_ did you _do_?” Thomas yelled.

He never yelled. He was always calm and well spoken, even when he hardened himself during arguments with his father. He never raised his voice without a calculated reason. How quickly one devolved he thought. One night in a slum and a few unpleasant revelations and he was turning into a dew-beater.

John reached into his coat and pulled out one of his pistols, which had been hidden under layers until now. He laid it casually against the stump of his leg. Peter looked between them and Thomas realized that he was standing between Peter and the door. That his friend was, effectively, trapped in his own sewing parlor.

He could have moved. He could have stepped aside and told John to put away the gun and assured Peter that nothing was meant by it. He probably should have. He didn't.

Peter began to talk. Slowly at first, and then faster as John raised the pistol in a considering manner and Thomas listened, like a fool, to how Peter had presented himself as witness to the Admiralty in his affair with James.

He stood there, and he watched his friend go on about his father the Earl, and how Peter had only agreed because he believed it would cause the least damage for all of them. That he truly cared about Thomas. That he had no notion of any Governorship.

Thomas listened to the excuses. Listened to him dig his proverbial grave deeper with every word. If he'd been kind, he would have stopped Peter, but he didn't. It was the closest he'd come to cruelty in a long, long time.

Eventually Peter finished with a closing statement about how they could continue on fighting the good fight. Thomas had seem him make it before, when he stood on the floor of parliament.

Thomas held up a palm. It shook.

“You betrayed us?” He asked in a whisper, and the words didn't make sense as he said them.

John's pistol was still raised, and now so were Peter's hands. Thomas was sure, though he did not know why exactly, that all he would have to do is say the word and John would shoot Peter dead right there in the parlor.

It was a heady and awful sort of power to have when he felt so fragile. If he broke in the slightest Peter's blood would be spattering the rug, and Thomas would see another loved one torn away from him. Wasn't that simply the cruelest irony.

Peter had dinner with them yesterday. He held Miranda back when the Earl's men where dragging Thomas from his own table, and he had known, he must have known then, exactly where they were taking him. He hadn't said a word. He hadn't warned them. Thomas wondered how hard it was to pull a trigger, and swallowed, pressing a hand to his mouth.

“We made sure they were safe Thomas,” Peter began. “They--”

“Safe!” Thomas shouted. “You destroyed them Peter! You've taken their lives in every way that mattered, and for what? My father I understand, for him this was never anything more then a political fight over superiority, however personal it was, but you.”

Thomas wanted to sound angry. Miranda would have been enraged. She would have screamed, and howled. Thomas felt near tears.

“Did you believe in nothing that we worked for? Did you care at all for the men and women this measure might have helped? Was giving pardons really so monstrous, that the people I loved needed to be ruined for it?”

“Gods sake Thomas, don't be so naïve.” Peter turned his back on him, though not, he noticed on John.

“Is that we're calling it?”

“I didn't have a choice.”

“We always have a choice!” Thomas returned heatedly.

“You want to talk of ruin?” Peter asked, spinning round again and waving at him. “Well it was made clear to me that my estate, my family, our name, everything I had would be destroyed--

“My father--”

“Not by your father, by you.”

“What?”

“Your politics, while admirable Thomas, are to be plain, dangerously close to seditious. The pardon measure was suicidal. It was never going to pass. Your father and I tried to find another way--”

“You were helping him before this?” Thomas's voice squeeked, his composure fraying like cut rope.

“Not at first.” John's hoarse tone cut across the room, and Thomas turned to find him watching them both with flames from the hearth reflected in his eyes like some Faustian devil. “That came later, I imagine, when Ashe needed a way out of his own failing scheme.”

Peter looked like he'd swallowed something bitter and if a man's eyes had the power Thomas thought John would have dropped dead from look Peter threw him.

“Who _are_ you?” Peter demanded.

“Who I am is less important right now than who you are,” John replied calmly. “You're a realist, Ashe, not a philosopher. Even if you'd had an honest interest in Thomas's salon, you'd never have set foot in it without political motive. Not with the kind of attention he was garnering.     

Perhaps at first it was merely to get a foot in on the other side of the isle, hmmm? make yourself seem less partisan, more of a middle man, but then you heard him talk. I bet you thought, 'here's a quick way to get rid of a rival'.

It would have been so easy. All you had to do was show up and listen, and wait, sooner or later he was going to say something you could use to hang him. Fuck, you must have come in your pants when Thomas brought up his pardon measure.”

Ashe flinched at the vulgarity and John leaned forward, a hungry kind of menace in his smile.

“But you got in too deep didn't you? Believe me, I understand. It must have stung running to old Hamilton once you realized you were being tainted by association. When they started whispering about treason, did you ever laugh at the irony? I know I am. And now here you are, more in old Hamilton's pocket then you were before.”

“Peter...” Thomas choked.

He'd suffered rejection before. Ridicule and parody and indifference were his old friends, but it had been a long time since a betrayal cut this deep. He wasn't sure it ever had, really. It felt as if he'd been stabbed.

“Thomas, I never meant for any of it to come to this.” Peter insisted, something broken in his voice.

Perhaps in another time, he would have taken Peter at his word. Perhaps it was merely too soon to hear this. Perhaps the shock was too much, or the pain of it all was too close and fresh for him, but in this tiny sewing room Peter's words sounded so hollow. He kept hearing John's asking if there was going to be “a mourning period,” for appearance sake.

“I'm sorry,” Thomas whispered.

“We all make mistakes,” Peter assured him, confident, a friend suddenly offering support and took a step forward. “The important thing now is--”

“You misunderstand,” Thomas said turning away and putting his shaking hands in the dirty pockets of his long overcoat. “I'm sorry that I can't forgive you.”

“Thomas?”

“I considered you a friend, a very dear friend, and perhaps if things had been different or if I was the only victim of this perfidy, then one day I might have been able to forgive it all.”

He could picture it actually, a scene years from now, spurred by John's words. Sitting in Bethlem, rail thin, and sick and cold, and knowing he was dying. Having Peter come to see him. Seeing the grief on Peter's face and how it would have built up over time, and gave real weight to what he said. Knowing he did not wish to die with hate in his heart, and telling Peter he forgave everything, unequivocally. After all, he'd be in heaven soon and he'd have no use for hate there. Best to let it go on Earth.

But when he looked at Peter now, as a free man, all he could say was. “But not like this. Not Miranda, not James. I cannot forgive that.” Thomas whispered.

Peter's lips pressed into a thin line, and his complexion had turned pale and waxy, but Thomas could actually not determine whether it was from shame at himself or disgust with Thomas.

He turned away and opened the parlor door.

“Thomas wait-” Peter called.

He did not wait. He strode down that hall, back straight and eyes ahead. Somewhere behind him he heard the clomp-stomp of a wooden crutch on the polished floor.

“Thomas!” Peter called, his voice getting smaller as Thomas left him and his house behind.


	6. Chapter 6

It was still early, by his standards, about the time of day when Miranda would take a turn in the their chaise and four, or walk the park. Sometimes, if he had no pressing engagements, he would join her and they would drive up and down the avenue. She would nod to their acquaintances, tell him who was gossiping about whom, and he would tip his hat and listen. He hadn't joined her for some weeks of course, preoccupied with his growing campaign with Peter.

He tripped on a loose cobble, and grabbed at the cast iron spike of a nearby fence, before pulling in a shaky breath and moving his feet forward again.

He had no idea where he was going. He had no plan. He was simply walking. The avenue slowly filled with familiar faces, dressed in afternoon finery and if not for the steady thump of a crutch behind him he could have pretended this was any other morning. But the noise continued undaunted, the crutch making a thump whenever it landed on the cobbled road.

He eventually stopped at a little wall overlooking the Thames simply because he could go no further without walking straight into the river. He looked out over the water and the rolled white sails of sloops and cutters, and the odd ketch. The crutch came to a halt beside him and the smell of brine grew stronger. A rough, ringed hand settled next to his on the stone wall with a sigh.

There was a moment of silence, and then his dreadful companion spoke.

“It's a special kind of hell isn't it. Seeing your world dissolve? All your predictions and clever tricks come to absolutely nothing and despite every effort and feeling like your fingers are tearing at the sockets trying to hold it all together, in the end all you can do is watch it fall apart while you fail to save the things that really matter.”

“You sound as those you speak from experience.” Thomas turned to look at John.

The old man hummed.

“Was this meant to be some sort of revenge on Peter? or on me?” Thomas asked then, fingers trembling on the worn stonework, and honestly unsure whether he or Peter were supposed to be the more injured party right now. He was shaking badly and wasn't sure he could entirely blame the cold either.

“Why would you think that?” John asked casually, propping his chin on the top of his crutch, eyes fixed on the boats in the river.

“Because, you _enjoyed_ watching that.”

John's lips quirked, just barely, and his bird ruffled its feathers. “Yes. I suppose I did at that.”

“Why?” Thomas whispered. “Why did you follow me here? Why did you say those things?”

John finally looked at him, turning his head just a bit on his crutch.

“Would you have rather remained ignorant?” he asked, sounding genuinely curious.

“No of course not, but--” Thomas should his head. “I... It was just...”

“Cruel?” John prompted.

Thomas's silence was an affirmation and John looked back out over the river.

“I have a reputation for cruelty, Mr Barlow, best you learn that now. Ask anyone you like about me, if you can find them that is, and the first thing they will tell you is that I'm ruthless man. Monstrous. Sadistic. An Animal.”

“A reputation is not the sum of a man,” Thomas muttered, the pain under his heart making some room for irritation as he straightened to glare down at the smaller man. Thomas prided himself on his patience and restraint and compassion but he was straining at the seams a bit after the horrendous revelations of the morning, and he was not in the mood to appreciate John's word games.

“It's a start.” John shrugged and then made a face, as if Thomas was the one being perverse. “You know, I'm not sure if your tendency to believe people are better then they appear, despite evidence to the contrary, is very admirable or very stupid.”

There had been very few times in his life that Thomas wanted to strangle someone. Most of those had been struggles with stupid boys at school, back when he was young and at a loss for words, but knew he was undoubtably right and the only way his childish mind could think of compelling reason in his opponent when his own argument had been ignored was to literally throttle sense into them.

Once or twice he'd even felt the urge to do that with his own father. Thankfully he never tried, and he'd mostly outgrown the childish impulse. It only brought more pain to both parties and certainly never convinced anyone of anything. At that moment though his fingers practically itched to grab John and shake him until all the obfuscations fell out of his mouth.

If John had argued and lied, and insisted he'd meant it all in kindness as Peter had, Thomas would have known he was full of air. It would have solidified him as a man Thomas did not dare trust, because being a tool for someone else's vendetta was a position a friend would never put a you in.

Instead John came right out and claimed he was cruel, or rather that everyone would say he was. John spoke of cruelty the same way he'd talked about Bethlem, as if it were part of some story he was re-telling. Which of course left Thomas thinking there must be more to the story than that because John liked to befuddle.

It had not escaped him that when John was asked a direct question he didn't want to answer the man would redirect the conversation, or they'd find themselves conveniently interrupted. John had told Thomas he wanted him to live, but not why. When Peter asked who he was John made a speech about Peter's philosophy, or lack there of.

It would, Thomas thought, be totally in keeping with the man's character, so far as he'd observed, to let others paint him however they wished to, simply so John would not have to explain his own motives. Even though John sounded almost bitter when he said everyone would call him a cruel man. As if he regretted that was the case.

“How did you know?” Thomas finally asked him. “About Peter?

“I don't for sure,” John replied. “But I know the kind of man he is, and its not hard to guess what _that_ kind of man would do. He as much as confirmed it back there in any case.”

“Is that who you were watching at my home then? Peter?”

“We should get off this street.” John muttered, looking around the river walk at the gentlemen and ladies taking in the sight of the Thames. “We're not dressed for the company.”

Another question sidestepped.

Thomas gave him an incredulous look, and then on second thought glanced down at his shabby clothes and John's ragged blue coat, acknowledging that yes, they were a bit scruffy to be seen so near The Strand and out of the servants quarter. They weren't entirely out of place. There were a few laborers hauling goods along the walk, but perhaps it was their loitering that attracted attention. Thomas found he was getting a suspicious glower from a man in grey satin nearby.

It was very irritating that when John evaded something he made good points doing so. Thomas turned away from the stranger without a nod of courtesy and looked back at John, who despite his cautionary words was still leaning against the wall, rubbing at his left shoulder and breathing heavily.

Thomas's frown deepened.

John must be exhausted, he thought. Surely it took twice or three times the effort Thomas spent walking for John to get anywhere, and yet he'd still followed him all the way from Peter's house.

“They'll be looking for you soon you know,” John murmured, pulling Thomas out of his thoughts. “They know you're alive and in London now, but it may be better this way. The Earl will have something to be afraid of now.”

“What do you mean?” Thomas asked sharply.

John smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes. “Well, I would bet the good Lord Alfred Hamilton is going to spend a great deal of money searching for you after this, and every day he fails to find you will have him waking up in terror, afraid that any moment his eldest son will return from hiding with backers and support to see him placed in the same prison he intended for you. Father's, I'm told, are often afraid of being replaced by their children.”

“Was your's?” Thomas asked.

John blinked. “I never knew mine. There were… men who shaped me.” He brushed his bird's beak and she nipped at his fingers. “One more then any other, but I don’t think he ever feared obscurity. I think in the end he ached for it.”

“Are you a father?” Thomas asked, the words falling unbidden from his mouth.

John blinked again, looking taken aback.

“I apologize,” Thomas raised his hand and tried to recover from the breach in etiquette. Clearly John was a poor influence on his manners. “I only meant...” he rubbed his forehead with a still shaking thumb and then gave up with a sigh. “I don't know what I meant.”

That wasn't quite true. He had meant, or rather wondered, what it would have been like to have John Flint as a father, but asking that would have been insupportable.

He tried to imagine John in Whitehall, in his father's seat, with cane in hand and a buffed satin coat and the picture blurred before it even came to be, like a spot of ink in the water. Still, he wondered. What would it be like to have a father who feared for Thomas's life and happiness before the family reputation?

John Flint, he was certain, would not haul his son out of his home and commit him to a prison which was known for refusing to treat those too ill to survive its regime. John Flint, he thought, would have seen the paradox in that.

John had also shot down a galloping carriage intent on trampling him to death, and Thomas wished that when he thought of that moment he would hear something other then James's voice saying that someone should be willing to defend him.

Thomas was not accustomed to being defended. He had always been the one to step into the breach as it were. It was a little unsettling having that returned, first by James and now this strange one legged man who, for whatever reason, was invested in Thomas's welfare.

Thomas did not normally give himself to flights of fancy. Though he was sure James and Miranda would argue that while sharing one of those commiserating looks, Thomas maintained he was not a fanciful man. Everything he had set his sights on he believed to be fully achievable. So he did not dwell on the dream of growing up with a father who stood in his defense, rather than being the thing which Thomas learned to defend against. Alfred Hamilton was his father for better or worse.

His stomach rumbled.

“You should have enjoyed more of the Ashe's hospitality,” John scolded lightly, and then reached into his coat and pulled out the bottle of port wine he'd been enjoying in Peter's sewing parlor. Thomas stared at the stolen bottle, wondering when John had managed to slip that under his clothes. Then he thought he really shouldn't indulge. Then he thought about his father and Miranda and James and he uncorked the bottle and took a long drink.

He proceeded to drink until he'd finished the whole bottle, and when it was empty John passed over a second, squatter and fatter then the first. Thomas did not ask where that came from either.

The world started to blur around the edges, and he was grateful his father wasn't here to see him this state. Only old John, who didn't have anything to say about appearances. The pain that had been digging under his sternum since he left Peter's house also became softer and farther away.

He looked at the dregs of the squat green bottle and thought about Miranda in that lovely green dress telling him her worries about rumors and scrutiny; his wine soaked thoughts slowly uprooting events and turning them over, like stones on the shoreline to see their underside.

Yesterday he'd been so sure that this was all meant to be some perverse lesson of his father's. Now with John and Peter's words each echoing in his head, he wondered if he was ever meant to be freed from Bethlem at all. His father had been sweeping in his condemnation of them all, James and Thomas and lovely Miranda.

He wondered if his younger brother had already received a letter summoning him to London. If his father had been prepared to tell him that he would be inheriting their estate in Thomas's stead, and what he planned to do now that Thomas was not conveniently locked behind bars.

He wondered where his father expected Miranda to go. Did he think she would have no choice but to run to her own family and beg their protection? That she would be willing to retire to the country on some stipend as nothing but another shameful rumor whispered around society? Resign herself to be exiled in some cottage by the sea? Thomas simply could not imagine it. She was far too bright to be stuffed away out sight. The thought of her fading like that hurt almost more then James's dismissal.

He could believe his father gave little thought to what James did after he was “removed," and while Miranda's family might settle her somewhere comfortably, they would not spare anything to help James. But Miranda, he knew, would not leave their lover behind.

Was it selfish to cling to the knowledge his last words to her had been a plea for them to take care of each other?

Where would they go now?

“Think.” He reprimanded himself. Forget what he would do and think like James, he told himself. After his father had brought the full weight of his authority down on them James would want somewhere removed from not just London, but London's influence. He wouldn't bet on the colonies, Boston and New York were too invested in mimicking London and currying it's favor.

Peter had surely offered them assistance and since they had not taken it he assumed Amsterdam was out, and James wouldn't trust charity in any case. He suspected an exile in obscurity would suit James no more than Miranda. He was a man action and conviction, and he could no more picture James quietly tilling a farm than he could imagine Miranda outside high society.

“But James would never take Miranda anywhere that would put her in danger either,” he mumbled to himself.

John laughed suddenly. It was loud and offensive.

Thomas raised his head from his slightly tipsy contemplations. “Have I said something amusing?” he demanded softly.

John continued to laugh, and tears pricked his eyes as he leaned over the wall, howling with mirth. They were drawing a lot of stares now but Thomas barely noticed, his attention fixed on John.

“You know where they went.” Thomas realized.

He surged forward and grabbed John by the coat, squeezing it tightly. There was no reason for John to know, but at that moment Thomas was utterly sure he did.

“Where are they?” he demanded.

John's laughter died, and his expression grew sober. “Nassau.”

A flame of understanding lit Thomas's mind and he whispered “oh, yes,” already worlds away.

“No.”

“I beg you're pardon?”

“You're not going to Nassau,” John pointed at him.

“No, no, this can work.” Thomas began and leaned foreword and warming with the argument. “If you approach some people on my behalf--”

“Let me stop you right there.” John interrupted, raising a hand. “I'm not here on your behalf. Not in that way. I'm employed by no one but myself, and you sailing to Nassau just to get yourself hung or shot there instead of committed here is not why I pulled you off that road.”

“Why did you?” Thomas challenged.

“We'll get you passage to Copenhagen, and you can write your lover whole bible passages from there,” John continued, and leaned back as if it was already decided, his white whiskers bristling. Thomas's nose twitched at the sudden acrid hint of powder on the old man.

“That's a long way away.” He offered after a moment.

“Then go to Brussels for all I care, anywhere but that fucking island.”

“All right,” Thomas agreed, holding up his hands in surrender and a little worried John might have a fit of some kind. “We'll think of something else.”

John peered at him, suspicion etched in his wrinkles, and Thomas avoided the man's eyes by blowing into his hands to warm them and looking up and down the street. John's outburst had drawn more attention it seemed and a cadre of young officers in bright new red uniforms were headed towards them with focused looks and a distinctive swagger.

Thomas pointed at the approaching officers.

“How likely would you say my father is to employ the army?” he asked, unsure.

“You know him better then I do,” John said turning to follow Thomas's gaze, and then immediately broke off with a vulgar, “fuck!”

He hitched his crutch under his arm, and then shoved Thomas away from the river walk, pushing him into a narrow street as he hobbled behind him. Thomas was a groggy and stumbled beside John as he ducked his head inside several doors before disappearing into one of the buildings. When Thomas followed him in, he found the old man tossing his crutch up into a loft filled with barrels.

“Get up there,” John ordered, and Thomas frowned but quietly did as he was told. Then he watched with some awe as John clambered up after him, using his half leg to balance on each rung as he pulled himself up. Thomas helped him over the edge of the loft, and then pulled the ladder up after them at John's direction. The Captain flapped its wings and whistled before hunkering down next to where John lay, as if it was just as wise to the need for quiet as it's master.

Thomas was a little lost.

“Why are we hiding?”

“Common fucking sense.”

“Surely it would be better to simply explain ourselves.” Thomas argued. “Even if my father could employ a regiment for his personal use this quickly, and that's quite debatable though not impossible given his recent interference in the Navy, running only makes us look guilty of something.”

John sent him a withering glare.

“It doesn't matter if they're in your father's pocket or not.” John hissed again. “I don't fancy getting whipped by bored young cocks with more authority then sense and dying from a fever in a week. Do you?”

“No,” Thomas replied. Not sure why John expected that to happen, but given the look on his face Thomas decided it would be best to save that question for another time.

Two of the officer's who'd been aiming for them on river walk sashayed into the storehouse below them. John pulled him flat against the loft floor and went so far as to put a hand over Thomas's mouth while they lay there quietly. John watched the men below, and Thomas watched John, worried as the old man was looking pale and out of breath.

The officers were young, one of them still had pimples scattered over his cheeks, and at first they simply walked around the floor, peering behind canvas and ropes and empty barrels. Then one of them picked up a broken wooden spar and swung it, very suddenly, at one of the closed barrels sending an almighty smack echoing through the house. Thomas jumped at the violence, and John tightened his hand over his mouth.

The young men proceeded to stalk through the floor, whacking on crates like they were hunting for rats. Eventually they grew bored and gave up the chase, one of them suggesting they get an ale. John stayed where he was, on his belly with one hand on Thomas and the other holding a pistol while he watched the door.

Outside Thomas could hear the cries of gulls, and the hubbub of a busy dock quarter. Winter was coming and the sky, which he could see through a hatch in the ceiling, was flat, and grey. It was the kind of sky James would say hinted at unhappy days. Thomas would tell him his sailor's superstitions were charming. Miranda would make a face that would take Thomas all day to interpret and James would insist superstition had nothing to do with it, and provide some lecture on the intricacies of the weather which would have Thomas insisting he deserved a place in the Royal Society.

“You're going to do it anyway, aren't you?” John said, out of the blue.

“Hmm?” Thomas looked back at him.

“After I put you on a ship,” John mused, taking his hand from Thomas's mouth, his own face mostly in shadow from the light above. “To wherever the fuck you finally agree to go, and once it makes port you'll find the next vessel headed for the West Indies and hop right onboard. Sail into the fucking storm, and convince all the men they want to drown with you.”

Thomas frowned at the allusion but said nothing. John clenched his jaw and looked at his bird as if having some private and disagreeable conversation with it. Then he grabbed the ladder and shoved it over the side, dropping the bottom and gesturing for Thomas to climb down again.

Once he had John tossed his crutch to him and then, limber as a monkey, actually slid down the ladder. Thomas gaped a little at the feat. John, now on the ground again, took his crutch back and shrugged like a horse settling its skin.

“You know,” John said. “He once told me that madness is a hard thing to define, and at the end of the day how different is righteousness from madness? I used to wonder what kind of man you were. I don't know why I'm surprised the two of you turn out to be so fucking similar.”

Then he started limping out of the storehouse

“John,” Thomas turned after him, trying to placate the man.

John snapped his fingers and The Captain flew down from the loft, and landed on his outstretched arm before it sidled up to its usual perch on his shoulder. He did not look back.

“John?” Thomas called again, following his crippled friend outside and around a corner into a busier street filled with men hauling timber and sacks, and sailors with oiled pigtails carrying huge coils of rope.

“John wait”, he called, but John did not stop. Between one moment and the next he had disappeared into the unwashed mob, before Thomas could even finish reaching out a hand. A cold wind blew, raising motes of dust and grime in the air. Thomas's fingers closed on nothing, and he stood in a sea of unfamiliar faces, aghast, and wondering what had just happened.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: This chapter mentions pedophilia, but it does not happen in the story.

~

He thought John would come back. He was sure it was simply a mistake, losing each other, and that John would come hopping back with a scowl on his weathered face once he realized Thomas was no longer at his elbow. So he waited, and waited and waited, standing like a overly tall lump in the middle of the road.

Workers pushed past him and glared over their shoulders and still he waited, afraid that if he left this spot John would appear, and they'd miss each other. The more time passed the more foolish the idea seemed but he could not let go of it, even as an awful sinking feeling began to consume him.

Several properly dressed people mistook him for beggar. A young woman, he guessed no more then sixteen and sporting a lovely yellow satin frock, left him a penny and a look of pity. He tried to give the money back but she was hurried away by an older woman in a dramatically lacy bonnet before he could.

He did appreciate the girl's kindness, but he wasn't sure what good the gesture would do. What could one get for a penny? He had never spent less then eight shillings on a meal when he traveled, and he had always given shillings to the poor in charity. His father had upbraided this as wanton extravagance.

Thinking of his father made him think of John again as he turned the penny over in his fingers. Surely he would come back. _What if he didn't?_ He'd invested too much in Thomas's freedom to simply leave him in the street. But wasn't that the point of seeing him free? So Thomas could go about his business, and John could, presumably go about his own? What would he do if John didn't come back? He fisted both hands around the penny.

He had been foolish, he decided.

When he believed all he needed to do was apply to Peter for help, humiliating as the idea had been at the time, he'd thought of John as a temporary fixture in his life. One which would soon be swept away when Thomas stepped out of the lower end and back into his own neighborhood. He'd thought of John as a crutch. One he had every intention of seeing well cared for, to repay him, but still a prop. With Peter no longer an ally, James and Miranda gone, his father looking to strike him down, and his other relations not an option Thomas was now... destitute.

He'd known that the moment he stumbled out of Peter's house. He'd simply assumed that John would be there to support him with his gruff and flippant company. That he'd see Thomas through the days to come until he could reach Miranda and James. He'd barely thought beyond the need to find them. He'd certainly given no thought to John, or his circumstances and now... John was not there.

He garnered a few more pennies from the passing well to do while he stood there, not knowing where else to go but eventually he was forced to turn off the street at the urging of his bladder.

There was, he thought, a unique humiliation to relieving oneself against the back alley wall of a hackney coach office, where anyone could see. He went through it as quickly as he could manage, missing the privacy of his personal chamber.

When he turned around he came to nose to nose with the ugliest face he'd ever seen. The man was horribly scarred, with pock marks, missing teeth and a roving left eye that listed downward like a ship in the wind. He smelled ghastly, and Thomas raised a hand over his nose even as he began to ask what he could do for the man.

He didn't get more than a word out before the stranger brought a wet knotted rope down on his head and proceeded to beat him into the street. Thomas ended up on the ground, clutching his sides while the man screamed about thieves begging on his corner. He took most of the pennies Thomas had been given and he only managed to hold onto one, clenching his fist around it, which was mostly out of shock at the attack. Then the man spat on Thomas and left.

Thomas lay there, breathing heavily, with his back against his own urine and trying to not think of what Miranda would say if she saw him like this. He looked down at the pennies in his hand, struck by how he had become a beggar in a matter of hours, and as far as London was concerned, he was just one more lost soul now, with no money and no connections.

There seemed little point in returning to the street, and hoping John would return. So when he had the strength he pushed himself off the ground and began walking again. The wound on his head had been opened again, and he wiped at it absently as an odd trickle of blood slid down his face.

He did not try and go back to the cleaner, wealthier roads. Naïve he might be, but even he knew a man with blood on his face could not linger there unnoticed. He wandered through twisted back streets instead, until he caught another glimpse of the Thames in the crack between two buildings. He pushed himself through the gap, and went down to the foreshore, following it east away from everything that had once been familiar.

What should he do now? He could write to his brother perhaps, and have him purchase passage to the West Indies on his behalf, or send him some money, but what if he went straight to their father with it? He loved his little brother but the boy didn't have much of a backbone, he was sad to say.

The river's shore was dark and slick, and his boots sank up to the ankle in mud. Flies buzzed over weeds and tried to swoop up his nose. So he pulled John's scarf back around his face, tying to tightly and breathing in the clean sea smell that still clung to the fabric. His stomach rumbled and he was forcefully reminded of how little food he'd had that day.

The walls of the river walk turned into low, haphazard stacks of rocks and then into rough shod hovels of wood and canvas. Dredgers trudged up and down the shore, hauling their nets, and a few old crones crouched here and there, with filth up the their elbows and claw like fingers digging in the mud for clams and cockles.

He could work, he supposed, but what sort of trade could he do? He wasn't skilled in labor. He supposed he'd be apt at something scholarly, book-keeping perhaps, dull though that might be.

Even so, how long would it take him to find such work, and once he had it how much longer to earn the money needed for a passage to New Providence? Months? Years? Would Miranda and James even be there when he finally arrived or would they have moved on? Thomas saw his life spinning out in front of him in an endless chase, always a step behind them until they all grew old and died alone, he without ever reaching them and Miranda and James thinking of him in Bethlem all that time. He could not bear it. He needed to find a better, faster way.

All told, it was the worst day of Thomas's life.

His supper was a pair of clams he dug out of the mud with his bare hands and ate raw, and he was almost more hungry after eating them than he'd been before. He spent the night on a plank of rotten wood underneath a wharf, though he didn't sleep much. It was too cold. His joints ached, and his hands felt like they'd been burned. Every time he began to drift off a shiver would wrack his body and yank him awake.

The next morning he spent his single penny to get a bit of bread, and actively begged his way east along the wharves while he tried to find someone in need of an account keeper. He stopped counting how many times he was told to “fuck off,” and by noon the only man who'd listened long enough to ask him to prove he could write was a battered, mean looking seaman who looked as likely to kill Thomas as pay him.

He ended up sitting on a piling, on a very familiar dock, looking up a scaffold of hanged men, and an empty black iron ring waiting for its next noose. There were no hangings today it seemed, but the bodies of the last men dropped from Execution Dock were still swinging in the breeze like ragged promises.

Thomas watched their dirty feet twist in the air, and wondered who they'd been, and how many times they'd faced the choice he was currently mulling over. Whether to spend the few pennies he'd garnered and eat today, or go hungry and try to save them, hoping tomorrow he'd make enough to eat and put away a bit for a future passage on one of the ships looming over the wharf.

And then, so soft that he almost didn't catch it under the noise of the dock, a familiar voice came up behind him, singing.

“How oft on yonder grave Sweetheart, where we were wont to walk— The fairest flower that I e’re saw, has withered to a stalk.”

Thomas closed his eyes, and the weight of relief flooding through him was so heavy it almost crushed his heart. He didn't dare turn around for fear that he would see only empty air, and confirmation that John had never been anything but a ghost.

“I thought you'd left,” Thomas whispered.

John's sharp briny smell wafted over him, and the hard thunk of his crutch beat against the wooden dock.

“Where would I go?” John returned, wearily, and Thomas looked up and drank in the sight of his friend as John sat beside him on the pier.

“Copenhagen,” Thomas tried to joke, “or Brussel's perhaps.”

John cracked a smile, though it was a tired looking one, and Thomas twiddled his thumbs.

It was strange. He would have thought John could go anywhere he liked. John seemed like such a worldly and formidable figure, never at a loss for words, or coin, or direction, and the idea that he might be as lost as Thomas was rather unsettling. Where did John come from? He suddenly wondered. Did he truly have nowhere to go without Thomas? Or did John mean there was simply nowhere worth going, because anywhere he went would be just as bad as where he was now?

“This isn't where I expected to find you,” John said and Thomas was almost giddy at the interruption.

“No, nor I,” he said, looking up at the empty scaffold and forcefully holding his tongue back from asking how John had found him. He was too grateful the man had. Later he would ask. “But I didn't have any particular place in mind. I suppose that says rather more than less.”

A pair of Gibbets swung, tinkling like chimes, and the air shifted, heavy with salt and a rotting meaty smell.

“James took me here,” he admitted. “The first day we met. He wanted to me see the spectacle, and understand it's purpose. I thought I did at the time, though I didn't agree with him on it.”

“Why not?”

“Well, James told me civilization needs to make monsters out of men in order to function, but if that's true it rather suggests our civilization is hoax, doesn't it. .... and I simply could not believe that our most basic nature was so cruel.”

“But now you do?”

“No.” Thomas replied firmly, and John smirked into his beard. “But I have realized I didn't appreciate his other allusion.”

“What's that?”

“That I might be the man strung up on that scaffold, and made an example of, and when that happened, all the people I had loved and called my friends would be standing on those docks and cheering.” He swallowed.  “That they might even pull the lever themselves. Part of me wonders now how much of this he saw coming.”

“Do you know what makes a great con, Mr. Barlow?” John suddenly asked.

“No, I'm afraid I missed that particular lesson at school.”

John grinned. “Distraction, and theater. Take that old gallows.” He nodded up at the empty scaffold. “The story is that it's a tool for justice. That the wicked are held to account and good people can see what becomes of those who go against the law. But the truth is the gallows doesn't care if your guilty or innocent, or if what you did was wrong at all, and it's just as likely the men cheering your death today will be hung themselves tomorrow.”

“For the same blow might strike anyone.” Thomas quoted, and morbidly thought about what Peter would look like, if he ever walked up those stairs and stood beneath the noose.

“That's the truth, and that's why they want stories, because the other key to a good con Mr. Barlow is knowing that people listen to the lies they want to hear. Most of them will even tell you what lie they want, if you listen carefully.”

John stared up at the gallows, chin resting on the top of his crutch and some disturbed expression passed over his features.

“Howell was hung at the gallows,” he said after a moment.

“A friend of yours?” Thomas asked.

John shrugged. “He felt like more of a necessary evil at the time. He worked on my leg and I was lucky actually. He knew real medicine. He had anatomy books and everything. Not like some who carried a saw a called it done.”

“He was a doctor?” Thomas was shocked. The idea of a doctor being hung was so antithetical as to be absurd.

John nodded.

“And he was hung for... piracy?” Thomas cautiously aired his suspicion and John gave him a sly sideways look.

“They have all kinds, pirates. In Howell's case, well, he was no saint. He took his share of prize money with the rest, but it didn't matter who you were, Howell would do his best for you. He'd treat you with respect. Unlike some wigs here, who tell you how much of swab they think you are and how they'd happily let you die if they weren't beholden to duty. Howell was a kind man. Which is harder then you might imagine among pirates.

We weren't in time for him, but after they hung him we pillaged the tavern where they held their trials and found all sorts of tripe about him, likely written up to send back to England to justify what they'd already done.

They said that doctoring criminals made Howell a criminal himself. It's a poor excuse for civilization indeed that'll hang a man for healing the sick. It shouldn't matter who they are. So that's something you can put in your articles, when you go about building your new world.”

“You believe that's still possible?” Thomas asked.

“I know that burning everything to ground isn't.” John replied with gruff certainty. “A very wise woman once told me that one needs to be a little mad to see what the world could be. He used to say the same thing but he was...” he broke off, as if something dark and terrible were stuck on the tip of his tongue and he couldn't force the words out. “Well,” John finally cleared his throat, “he was what he was. My question is whether you're mad her way, or his?”

“How would I know that?” Thomas frowned. He had no idea who this 'he' John referred to was. Dr. Howell perhaps? And who was the woman? Thomas had the instinct he was being measured. That John might not have come back for good and Thomas's answer would decide whether he would stay or leave again, but Thomas did not know what he was supposed to be answering.

“Why the pardons?” John asked.

“I-- what?” Thomas blinked, caught of guard.

“As a tool for pacification its quite effective, but what I always found interesting is that wasn't what _you_ intended it for. I think that, among other things, is what made you a man that had to be removed, and that's what makes you different from him. The precedent you wanted to set, and the way you went about it. I've never been able to figure out why you fought for it though.”

“We don't live in a world of reason and forgiveness," he tried to answer. "But we should, and if we let our fear of the proverbial cane stop us from doing good, then good will never be done.”

“That doesn't tell me why.”

“I don't understand.”

“You were wealthy, and you were free from hunger and cold and labor, torture and broken families and all the other shit which makes agitators. You never needed to do anything that didn't please you."

“Doing the right thing does please me."

“Why?"

 _“Why?”_ Thomas was shocked. Was John really testing him or was he unable to fathom the natural joy of kindness? How did one explain that?

“You don't benefit from it." John was peering at him with a considering eye. "And I can't imagine the moral superiority provides that much of a thrill. In my experience wealthy, contented men either do nothing, or work very hard to make sure no one else does anything to change the world. They enjoy it as it is. If this was just about following some pulpit ethic, the first whiff of adversity would have killed it stone dead and you wouldn't be in the mess you are now.”

It wasn't so different from what James had told him, on occasion, but he had never wrapped it in quite those terms, or asked about a personal stake. James was too much of a gentleman for that, and Thomas had never introduced him to his Uncle.

For a moment, Thomas was fourteen again. His Uncle's dry finger tips were fumbling with his shirt buttons in the dark and Thomas was taking the old man's hands in his and saying “we're going to stop now.”

Nothing significant happened between them. His Uncle had instantly backed away when Thomas spoke, but the brief exchange afterward was etched into his memory like a printing block.

His Uncle had said “Of course, yes, I know how confusing this is.”

“Do you?” Thomas mumbled trying to redo his cravat with trembling fingers.

“Of course, my father did it to me.”

It was the look on his Uncle's face which struck him at the time. The hang dog expression he always wore had been replaced by an easy smile and bright eyes. He was practically sunny, and it was not, Thomas realized because of what they had almost done. It was the look of a man who believed he was, finally, in the presence of someone he could speak freely with. He believed Thomas was like him and he desperately wanted someone to talk to.

It was the most disturbing moment of Thomas's life. On par with the wreckage of his father's coach and dead men on the High road. That was fast and bloody, but this was a creeping horror steeped in commiseration which made it palatable at the same time it made it sickening. His Uncle had smiled with relief and Thomas wanted to vomit.

It was very confusing, for a time. Having been introduced to such things in such a way, Thomas used to wonder if every time he looked at a young man and admired the finely toned back and calves and glistening skin, if this really was some symptom of perversion. If whatever had made his Uncle “that way” had done the same to him without him realizing. After all, he'd approached his uncle that night. He'd allowed the undressing.

But it was not the same. Not at all.

Thomas read, devouring book after book and sneaking looks at young men fencing in tight white pants between his pages. He wrote poetry about skin and lips and freckles and never used the word woman, and slowly, he put aside the incident. He was not his Uncle and he never desired anyone younger then himself. Rather the opposite. He had a taste for rougher men, with broad backs and fine minds and interesting experiences.

He kept an eye on his Uncle at parties. Once or twice he'd carefully taken the wine from the old man's hand and separated him from some young thing, making excuses about inebriation when his Uncle was still perfectly sober. It was an easy lie, and his Uncle would look at him with confusion as Thomas lead him away, and put him once more among his own peers.

They circulated a quite rumor, that his Uncle became handsy when he was in his cups, and the man carried a glass of wine with him everywhere, though he never drank from it. He never drank at all in fact, but he began to cling to the excuse, ready to serve it up whenever he felt the need to absent himself from a room.

The thing of it was, Thomas knew the moment he told anyone of this they would focus on what happened to him, and what his Uncle had done, which missed the point entirely. To Thomas, the point was what he had _not_ done. Or rather, the things that had _not_ happened to Thomas but left him wondering how much _had_ happened to his uncle, and his own father.

That single dark glimpse into the unknown past left him questioning everything. He would sometimes go up to the gallery on the third floor and wander among the paintings of the Hamilton family. He'd look up at his Grandfather's piggy eyed countenance gently rendered in umber and lead-tin yellow, and wonder about him and all the men and women who came before them. Which ones had been party to it. Who suffered? How far back did it go?

All he did know was that by the grace of god, or his father, Thomas had not been subject to this thing haunting his family. He might be the first Hamilton in generations not to be. He had an opportunity to set them on a better course. To make certain that from that day forward the Hamiltons, and all of England, made themselves better.

So Thomas threw himself into Stoic and Hellenistic Philosophy. He discovered Meditations. He took lovers, gorgeous fascinating young men, and then he met James who made every man before him pale in comparison to the brilliance of his mind. So full of thoughts if one only took the time to plum his depths, and plum Jame's depths he did, vigorously and with great enthusiasm.

His father, he knew, was aware of Thomas's inclinations. He also knew it enraged the man, but he never believed his father would do any more about Thomas's affairs than he had his Uncles, or his grandfather, or anyone else in their family. He would, in fact use his considerable sway to cover up anything that could bee seen as a blight or embarrassment. Even if a child got hurt.

Thomas sometimes stood by the marble fireplace in the east parlor after the rare visit from his father and drank himself into a quiet stupor thinking about how, if things had been different and he'd had any inclination towards harm or violence, or towards children, no one would have stopped him. They would, in fact, have assisted him by hiding it. That was something he wanted to change. No one should be able to get away with such things.

His grandfather should have been held to account.

Thomas also suspected that his preference for men was why his father secretly loathed him. Because Alfred had made certain Thomas was never subjected to whatever his own father had done to him, and he saw Thomas's natural interest in men as comparable to his grandfather's offense. An insult to his efforts to protect him, perhaps. As if he thought Thomas and Miranda were thumbing their noses at him with every lover they took.

Thomas did not know how to convince his father otherwise. All he could do was love the man from a distance, and accept that for him, love and fear of Alfred Hamilton would always go hand in hand. Someday, when Miranda had children, he would make sure they never knew that painful combination.

He might have told John all of this, but he did not. These things were private. Something he'd whispered only the vaguest notion of to Miranda in dark early mornings when the house was silent and still. Something he might, one day, tell James. It was not something this man, however compelling, deserved to know.

“You're right.” He finally looked down at John. “I'm not poor and I'd never been cold or hungry until yesterday. It isn't terrible things that have shaped me. It's knowing what terrible things I was saved from.”

John looked at him for a long moment and the quietly said, “fair enough.”

Something in his voice suggested he'd gleaned more from Thomas's vague answer then Thomas would like, but he did not ask for details.

Thomas cleared his throat.

“So, which of your old acquaintances does my madness parrot?” he asked, primly, folding his hands in front of him and eyeing the bird on John's shoulder. John smiled. It wasn't like any of the sharp smirks or wide grins he was becoming used to. It was softer. More reminiscent of the look John had given him when he pulled him out of the downed carriage.

“The one who wanted to live.” John sounded pleased by that.

“I would have thought that would be obvious.”

“You'd be surprised.” John mumbled.

Thomas was not sure what sort of answer the old man had been looking for, but he seemed satisfied. He was still there. That said, Thomas had a few questions of his own, about his shifty friend.

“When did you know?” he asked suddenly.

“Hmm? Know what?” John cocked his head.

“That Miranda and James were leaving.” Thomas looked down at his hands. “You weren't at all surprised when Peter said they'd gone. You knew my father arranged for my commitment. You knew the road they would drive to get there. You know James and Miranda left for Nassau, but I doubt James had even heard about my arrest by the time you brought me to that coffeehouse. Even if they took a ship that same night... how would you be able to tell me where they were going, unless you knew all this beforehand?”

“I could be lying.”

“You're not, and I'm not one of those people who are interested in comforting stories, John.”

John's smile grew wider.

“So the question becomes,” Thomas continued. “Did you arrange their passage to Nassau?”

John didn't answer

“If you did, then you must be much more deeply involved in this then any common man should be.” Thomas pressed. “No ordinary spy would care to arrange all that so far in advance. And if you say you didn't arrange it, then I'm forced to wonder how you came by the knowledge that they sailed for the West Indies, at all.”

“Why don't you ask what you really want to know,” John snapped and turned on him with a loaded gaze. “Ask me why I didn't save them as well.”

Thomas gulped. “Why didn't you?”

“There wasn't time. It happened too fast. I knew it would so I had to choose, you or them.” He looked back out at the docks. “I knew they'd be all right for awhile.”

“How?” Thomas begged. Yes, he was begging.

John raised an eyebrow. “Why Mr. Barlow, the very same reason you knew your father wouldn't let McGraw be hung like poor old Howell. As for the Indies, let's just say I have a connection and leave it at that shall we? Now, would you like my help in going after them, or shall I be on my way again?”

“Your tactics are despicable.”

“Yes, or no, Mr. Barlow Yes, or no?”

“You were so set against this endeavor yesterday.” Thomas muttered, wary of saying yes, though he desperately wanted to.

“The reason for the unreason with which you treat my reason, so weakens my reason that with reason I complain of your beauty.”

“Felician de Silva,” Thomas half smiled, recognizing the quote.

“Don Quixto,” John returned with a smirk, his white curls standing out in the salty air. “He told me once that if I wanted to understand you I should read  it.” He paused, then bit his lip and looked away, his voiced cracking as he added in a mumble, “and it was her favorite book.”

Thomas blinked, recalling a joke made in his very private study, far from listening ears.

John continued, oblivious to Thomas's sudden dejavu. “I should have remembered that the Don always rides into the fucking windmill no matter what anyone says, because he thinks its the right thing to do.”

“Thank you... I think.” Thomas wasn't sure whether to frown or smile and ended up caught between them.

“You wont be thanking me, once you see what Nassau makes of those who land on her.” John turned away from the dock, sounding sad. “And I'm not sure if he would be grateful for what I'm doing now, or hate me for it either.”

He wanted to ask about this man. Who outside Miranda would think to suggest on Don Quixoite as John's primer for him? Thomas was apparently important to this man, and the man was very important to John. How did he know Thomas? For that matter how did John know him? Was this man why John had come to his aid and could not leave?

He put the question away for another time. He didn't dare risk spooking John into flight by asking something too personal. So he swallowed his curiosity.

“Well, perhaps I'll surprise you both.” Thomas declared.

John shook his head. “You won't survive Nassau as you are, I speak from experience, and the man you'll become may be entirely unlike the man that meant so much to James McGraw.  Will he still love you then I wonder?” he looked sideways at Thomas as if sharing some awful joke.

“John--”

“Well, I suppose I should consider it a victory that you're leaving London at all. Come on.”

John hauled himself up and began making his way north away from the docks and river, with long strides and the thunderous stomp of his crutch.

One of these days, Thomas thought as he followed him, I am going to interrupt that man and leave him gawping in _my_ wake.


	8. Chapter 8

“Perhaps it would help if I had some idea what you’re looking for,” Thomas waved at the disordered sheets of paper with exasperation and rubbed his aching head. They were sitting outside a port master's office several docks away from the gallows, pouring over lists and schedules of ships. They had passed three other offices before John settled on this one and Thomas was not sure why John insisted on walking that whole way. It had obviously pained him, limping on his crutch so much, but perhaps the pain of walking was a lesser evil compared with the looming gallows behind them.

Thomas trailed a finger down a page with port of call, cargo, refit records and custom documents.

“This one—“

“No” John replied with barely a glance at it.

“It's a small ship,” Thomas argued.

“It’s an easy prize, and profitable too. She wont make it past Trinidad without being boarded and if you get run through then what was fucking point of any of this?” John grumbled.

Thomas took a deep breath. “Well, then perhaps the Galavant. That’s surely big enough to deter a pirate.”

“A weaker one maybe,” John did him the courtesy of peering at the list before he shook his head. “The Ranger wouldn’t shy from her. Or the old Walrus.”

“But why not the Prudence?” Thomas asked exasperated. He'd thought he had a decent grasp of a ship's qualities after all that time he'd spent planning an expedition with James, but if John's curt replies to every suggestion meant anything then Thomas knew next to nothing at all. He was undecided whether it was irritating or humbling, mostly because he was not sure if John was being practical or irrational in his fears.

“You need passage on a ship that’s poor enough it won’t be worth hunting. No tobacco, no sugar, no black cargo.” John stressed the last one vehemently. “I’d send you off on a ship carrying nothing but pots and pans if I could find one.” He picked up anther list and frowned. “As it is, you may have to make berth with oil and pray for the best, if you want to reach the island in one piece.”

Thomas sighed and took up another paper, only half his attention on the names and tonnage and ports of call.

“I’m beginning to think James would have been better off taking Miranda to Paris.” He mumbled and he’d never thought those words would cross his lips.

He adored Paris and the society was in some ways more forgiving than London but it was still society. He'd be an exiled lord and his lovers, living on the charity of friends until said charity ran out or he could reclaim his own position in London. Many lords had spent years in the guest chambers of some foreign power plotting a return that never materialized and Thomas did not intend to be one of those.

No, he knew why James had chosen to flee to Nassau. James had seen its promise for himself. They might accomplish things there. Truly accomplish things that Thomas could only dream of in Paris.

John shoved another list aside and pulled a large book toward himself, feeding his bird a bit of fruit as he did so. What a character his rescuer turned out to be Thomas thought. He could see him in Nassau, among the pirates and the bloody stories, a thought which gave him some pause as he recalled the last violent tale he'd heard.

“The governor was murdered in  Nassau you know,” Thomas rubbed his temple. “We had word of it just before all this.” He waved at himself and John. “James said he was dragged into the street, and that his children were killed.”

John did not look surprised.

“Conventional opinion,” Thomas continued slowly, “is that as of now, there is no law in Nassau. Is that true?”

John did look up at him then and narrowed his eyes. “Why would I know that?”

“Well, you seem to you know everything else you shouldn't.” Thomas shrugged and leaned back in his chair, lacing his fingers together in thought. “But it cannot be entirely unsalvageable. James --” he broke off before he made a declaration too intimate for their circumstances. “Well, surely the island would fall into the sea without something to hold it together.”

John sighed. “There are articles. Votes, shares, codes of conduct they claim to agree on, but the only real law in Nassau is making sure you're more dangerous than anyone who wants to fuck with you.”

“How--”

“You're less disturbed by Ashe then I thought you'd be,” John cut him off, abruptly changing of subject.

Thomas blinked and frowned. He thought about pursuing his questions on Nassau, but John was clearly in a prickly mood. It had been a long afternoon, and it did not escape Thomas that the old man was rubbing his shoulder more and more where the crutch sat under his arm. So he let it go. They would have a long ship voyage, once they found one, with plenty of time to talk about pirates.

So he twiddled his thumbs and thought about how best to answer John.

“I am disturbed,” he finally admitted. “Deeply, but more from disappointment than surprise I think.”

“And your father?” John asked, his old eyes looking cautiously up at Thomas through his white curls.

“Very much the same,” Thomas said “But its become rather an old story the last few years, being disappointed. Watching good people talk and then leave a room when asked to act. Even before I introduced the pardon measure. You must think me very foolish,” he hazarded, looking back at John, considering him the way he'd once considered James; trying to determine how much or little he believed was possible.

“I think your dangerous,” John replied shortly.

Thomas laughed a little. No one had ever called him that before. He looked out over the harbor when his chuckle died down, not knowing what more to say. He listened to the tinkle of the cleats and chains and the smack and clatter of barrels and boots on the busy docks. Nearby a group of rough looking sailors were hauling great spires of wood into a web of rigging, while more men swung up the enormous posts on cranes. A refitting, John had told him earlier, for the masts.

The din was immense, and Thomas rather wished they could have found a seat inside. Cold winds were blowing across the docks, rippling canvas and pushing winter chill's into Thomas's coat. The cold was not helping John's frayed temper either. He was shivering and looking at the lists as if they had personally offended him by their inability to measure up to his standards and was muttering while his curls began to frizz in sympathy. When Thomas silently passed over another list John actually swore at it.

“Trust that devil to take the only good fucking ship until winter. At this point we might as well sail out with the fucking navy.”

Thomas snapped up in his seat. “Why don't we?” He asked.

John turned on him with the strangest expression on his face. “Is that a joke?”

“Not at all.”

John glanced around the open porch of the office, and seeing no one nearby he leaned over the table until he was close enough they sharing breath and whispered. “I understand this all very alarming, losing your position, your wealth, your home, your family and your belief in people all at once in a very short space of time.”

Thomas's heart chafed with indignation as each loss was mentioned but stared back at John, refusing to yield to the list of his pains.

“But you need to understand, Mr. Barlow,' John stressed his name. “That you are no longer a man who can waive his hand and have the fucking Admiralty do his bidding. You are the hand that'll be tarring and pitching their decks if you're lucky and smart enough not to be hung by them or Baily for who you fuck.”

“And how is that any different from my other options,” Thomas returned calmly, his nose almost touching John's. “Without my father's estate I cannot pay for passage on a merchant vessel even if we could find one. I'll have take on as a hand, in any case.”

“Its the fucking navy,” John hissed. “You don't just take on as a hand with the navy and then skip off at the first port.”

“Not normally no, but if--”

“I'm very sure I don't want to know what comes next,”

“If I were to approach the right man, an officer of high rank something could be arranged where for all appearances I am their servant for the extant of the voyage. Surely no ship would be safer from piracy than one of the navy line.”

“And I suppose you have an officer in mind?” John looked like the noise of the harbor was giving him a headache.

“It's not a given,” Thomas said, “but I believe I can make a case and I believe he'll listen to it, which is really all I can hope for.”

“You really want to do this again? Wasn't Ashe enough? Relying on goodwill is stupid. You're as likely to have trouble with them having too much morality, as too little.”

John turned sideways and looked pointedly at a paper, nailed to a nearby post, with a manifesto for the Society of Manners declaring, among other things, the “corruption” of sodomy.

“Who exactly do you think is going to help smuggle you through the royal fucking navy?” John asked sounding like he really didn't want to know, but he hadn't gotten up and left so Thomas plowed on, taking it as an encouraging sign.

“Admiral Hennessy,” he declared, and waited for John's knowing nod or grimace. He expected the old man to know as many details of that player, as he had with everything else so far, but all he received was a curious rise of an eyebrow.

Thomas sat back, surprised. “You don't know him.”

“Should I?”

“I'm simply enjoying the moment.” Thomas confessed with a soft smile. “Catching you unaware seems to be something that should be savored.”

“Funny,” John deadpanned and Thomas's smile grew.

“The navy is also the last place my father would look for me,” he argued.

“Naturally, because you had an affair with a Lieutenant, your father would never consider--

“For the very reasons you aren't,” Thomas cut in. “Its too obvious. I know a place James often went drinking,” Thomas offered. “He met with the Admiral there. I'm sure we could find him without any trouble.”  

John was silent for a moment, and then slowly stood, abandoning the papers to the tender mercies of the wind. He pulled his crutch under his arm with a small wince. It passed over his features so briefly Thomas wouldn't have seen it if he wasn't avidly watching the man.

“Well?”  John grumbled.

Thomas smiled, gently secured all the loose papers beneath the office's main ledger and stood, leading his friend west along the harbor.  John hobbled beside him, the end of of his crutch rapping on the cobbles, and it may have been his imagination but Thomas liked to think his silence and stomping had a considering air to it.

  
~

  
The Sailor's Boot Tavern was dark, and a little shabby to Thomas's eyes, but nothing like the ruined shacks near Bethlem where the coffee house had sat. This was an elegant kind of shabby. The worn appearance made it look well loved and cared for. The wood bar and beams were oak, smoothed down by thousands of hands. Candles and lanterns filled tables and sconces and the spicy smell of good stew and tobacco smoke mingled in the room without any hint of piss or rot. Thomas breathed deep, appreciating the odoriferous escape, however momentary.

No one bothered them when he stepped in, and ushered John behind him. They received a few looks, but with John's leg, that was expected. The street was not so high and they were not so rough that they seemed suspicious in a tavern of sailors, and they, more then anyone, thought nothing of men who had missing limbs. On the whole it was clean and homely and much warmer than the gray outdoors, even this far from the fire.

John appreciated the heat if the easing of his shoulders was any clue. He gave Thomas a look and allowed himself to lead toward the back of the room where some tables remained free in the darker corners.

A few of the more handsome young officers sneered as they passed, but did nothing else. Unlike like the vulturous young men in red coats, these officers were well aware the privilege of their beer and warm company could be revoked. Admiral Hennessy was a frequent guest and did not stand for nonsense, James had told him once, sporting a bruised lip and a shame-faced expression.

And while the tavern was a popular spot among navy men, it also catered to a great number of merchants and tradesmen who knew which officers of rank to call to make a Lieutenant's life quite miserable if he caused any upset. So while some of the young men might be in want of trouble, they would not do more than curl their lips, and make idle comments.

John, not knowing the place as Thomas did, was looking stubbornly edgy and brittle. Though Thomas suspected a lot of it was pain, from his walk and the cold, and perhaps some resentment that the warm atmosphere was already doing some good for him.

He leaned into Thomas's side and whispered. “If this doesn't play out exactly as you hope, you'll be returned to your father or pressed into real service and I'll be set up for Transportation or the Pillory. If I'm lucky. I am too old for that.”

“I'm not worried about the Admiral being in my father's pocket,” Thomas replied quietly as he pulled out a chair for John and helped ease the old man into it. “If that's what worried you. This will work.”

“And what if, for the sake of argument, it doesn't?”

Thomas shrugged and said nothing. John scowled.

“Tell me you had a fucking plan for that,” John demanded getting ready to stand again. He stopped when Thomas put a hand on his arm and eased the crutch out of his hard grip, leaning against the wall nearby, within John's reach.

“Let me be very clear,” John hissed, turning baleful blue eyes on him. “There is no room for mistakes in the world you're planning to enter. You don't lose a few shillings, or someone's good opinion, or a fucking vote of things go wrong. You die. So if a bad outcome is possible, however unlikely, you don't fucking do it.”

“Some things are worth the risk.” Thomas replied softly, and brushed down his coat, feeling in his pockets for the pennies he'd saved from begging.

“I'm not one of them,” John practically snarled, and Thomas nodded.

From James that would have meant he didn't think he was valuable enough for Thomas to risk everything for. But this was John, and he was angry because he had a perfectly good sense of his own value, but thought other men only risked things that didn't matter to them, and he didn't appreciate being gambled with. Which in a way came out to the same thing, Thomas thought, shaking his head a little with an unexpected bloom of affection for his crippled friend.

“You've been limping more,” he said. John's lurching gate had become quite exaggerated on their way to the pub. “Rest here for a bit, and I'll get us something to eat.”

John looked mildly surprised when he produced his money, and very much like he'd prefer to continue arguing. But, for all that Thomas was bruised from the neck down from being beaten in the street a day ago, John looked the worse for wear. Near to keeling over in fact and unhappy about it, if the black look he was giving Thomas were any clue. The two of them, Thomas thought could do with a meal and some beds. Though his meager funds would not extend to the latter.

He patted John on the shoulder and left him muttering dark things at the table, while he made his way to the bar. Thomas had some trouble getting the attention of the man behind it and then had to wait and listen to doltish remarks about “the kind of people they let in here.” and how the tavern was “turning into a place any hand can drop his sea-trunk in.”

But more then that he was arrested but the talk of James McGraw.

The story, it seemed, was already getting around. None of them knew details, but everyone was speculating, and Thomas listened with a sinking heart as they glibly spoke about how Lieutenant McGraw had “run away” with the Lady Hamilton, who they said was having an illicit affair with him. That her husband Lord Thomas Hamilton had been committed to Bethlem due to his grief. One particular officer was looking decidedly smug about it, and said--

“Really, what else would one expect from that sort. McGraw was hardly a gentleman. From what I hear, he was barely even a man.”

Thomas pressed and fist to his mouth, in an attempt to keep it firmly shut and not tear their gossip to pieces. It was a very near thing, and he might have done himself an injury by leaping into the verbal fray if a much younger officer had not, at that very moment piped up.

“That's not at all what I heard.”

The crowd of officers turned as one, looking at the doubter. The boy was barely fifteen, if that, and a midshipman by his uniform.

“And what, pray tell, did you hear?” the smug officer replied with a conspiratorial look at the other young men, waiting for the boy to make a fool of himself no doubt.

“The Lieutenant was ordered to see Lady Hamilton to safety. She's fleeing London because someone tried to kill her husband.”

Thomas turned round with the rest of the officers to stare at the boy who now had the attention of everyone at the bar. Murder, attempted or achieved was always more interesting then rumors about who shared who's bed, as Miranda once said. One was titillating the other was dangerous and valuable. Thomas had never had a chance to see such a turn in action before.

Soon the boy was being plied with drink and questions, and Thomas found himself leaning around the edge of their crowd, listening with several other men and women in plain clothes.

The boy proudly told them Lieutenant McGraw and the Lady Hamilton had been seen boarding a skiff in the early hours of the morning. The Lieutenant was out of uniform and the lady was carrying a bag. They were worried about being followed. The man who rowed them out to the harbor would not, of course say what ship they had taken, but he knew they were concerned for the Lady Hamilton's life. That there had been an attempt on the life of Lord Hamilton and the man rowing the boat had heard “Lord Ashe” whispered along with “bribe” and “murder”. The seaman even said he'd heard the Lady Hamilton say she was “afraid of the Earl, Alfred Hamilton.”

Did they think Peter Ashe had tried to kill Thomas Hamilton? Or Lord perish the thought, had the Earl tried to kill his own son? Things quickly dissolved into arguing about who might want Thomas Hamilton dead, and whether or not they were justified. The midshipman drank his beer, happy to be the center of attention.

“Where did you hear all this?” Thomas asked the boy quietly from his place on the edge of their circle.

The boy turned and pointed at the back of the tavern, where he saw a crowd had gathered  around the dark corner he'd left John in.

“The seaman that rowed them, back there.”

“Seems a bit off to me,” the once smug officer said into his cup, now looking very sour . “A man claiming such an extravagant story, out of nowhere. Surely if Lieutenant McGraw were really meant to be seeing to the Lady Hamilton's protection their seaman wouldn't be spreading rumors about it.”

“They weren't going by Hamilton's name. He said they were calling themselves... something else,” the boy replied. “Blind luck, old John recognized them, he said. He was begging on the docks when they had him row them out, but he used to serve on the Lieutenant's ship before he got doffed because of his leg. Said the ships' master had it in for him, and didn't want a one legged man in the galley. He's telling the story for anyone that'll buy him a meal.”

The kitchen maid brought out the two plates of stew Thomas had ordered and shoved them at him before squeezing herself into the gossiping crowd and plying the midshipman with more questions.

The story began to grow in depth and depravity as Thomas took the plates and pushed his way through the crowd on shaky legs. By the time he reached the back wall, a full blown conspiracy had sprouted with Thomas's father and Peter colluding in the murder of not only himself, but Miranda and James as well, and it was being suggested that Admiral Hennessy had been asked by the Queen herself to sneak them away to safety because she'd been so fond of Thomas, despite his eccentricities.

John was sitting in the center of crowd of officers, old and young, with plates of beef and gravy and bread, and a tall tankard of beer. Thomas, after pushing through the men, set the plates he'd paid for on the table with a clatter, and then set both hands on the wood, leaned in and _looked_ at John.

“Well, that's all lads,” John told the crowd, and somehow shooed them away with a few laughs and jokes and the clink of cups. When they were all gone and it was just the two of them his smile fell right off his face like a poorly pinned paper notice.

Thomas took a deep breath.

“Are you incapable of not meddling?” he asked.

“These things move quickly,” John replied, tearing up a chunk of steaming bread. “Ashe and the Earl haven't had time to spread whatever cock and bull story they've got about your escape far beyond their own peers, so I'm sowing a few stories of my own before their account reaches the street. A little competition, if you will. Besides, its not as if it isn't true.”

John smirked, and then looked around the back of the tavern. Thomas followed his gaze, noting a grizzled seaman and a few older officers, studiously drinking nearby. He took a deep breath and used it to swallow his frustration before lowering his voice. He cast one more glance around them hoping he wouldn't be heard, and said,

“My father did not try to have me killed.”

“Didn't he?”

“Whether you believe I would have died or not does not mean that was his intention, and the Queen does not like me! I doubt she'd even remember me, I have no more importance to her then a fly on this table.”

He shooed said bug away and John waived him off.

“Stories always take on a life of their own. A one legged cripple becomes eight feet tall with the eyes of a god and a cock like an Ox. I've only given the facts, as I'm aware of them.” He grinned then with a devilish look. “Would you like to wager which will be the more popular gossip? His story or yours?

“Capturing attention isn't difficult.” Thomas whispered. “But I prefer to think about the implications of where that attention will go before I start making speeches to turn a crowd.”

John sighed. “If you're concerned about McGraw--”

“Among other things,” Thomas whispered hotly.

John shrugged. “Well if he doesn't return, they'll assume he was killed in the line of duty, and his memory will be honored, instead of erased. If he does wish to return, now he has a chance, however slim it may be.”

“And what about the implications for the Admiral, did you consider that?”

John frowned.

Thomas sighed and sat carefully. “Whatever my father plans to do next, and you can be sure he will do something, you have now placed the Admiral square in his sights. I may be on the run but I am still a Lord and the Admiral cannot refuse me or my father. Given that he and I are now at such extreme odds, from the Admiral's point of view there is nothing Hennessy can do that will not put him and his command in peril from one of us.”

John shrugged. “That may be, but I can't say I particularly care about the fate of an English Admiral or his navy, and given the place you're planning to run to, I'm not sure why you do either.”

“Admiral Hennessy is a good man--”

“So was Ashe, until yesterday.”

“He's been like a father to James. The man is honorable and just and... why are you making that face?”

“I'm sorry did you say--” John licked his lips as if the whatever words Thomas had uttered were too foreign to actually form in John's mouth.

Thomas frowned. “He's just and honorable.”

“No, before that.”

“He's been a father to James?”

John nodded, looking thoughtful and a little ill. “Yes. That.”

“Are you all right?” Thomas leaned in solicitous and worried. “You don't look well.”

John did in fact looked like he'd taken a knock to the head, and his eyes had become unfocused.

“I've never heard of him.”

“Yes,' Thomas said gently touching John's wrinkled hand. “You said that.”

John's drifting gaze snapped to Thomas, like a cat that suddenly heard the whisper of mice.

“No, I've _never_ heard of him.” John repeated and then muttered more to himself. “He never mentioned him. Not once.”

Thomas carefully covered John's knuckles with his, clasping like he could anchor John to the here and now before prodding, very carefully.

“Who didn't?”

“He told me about everyone else... but not him.”

A sudden gust of cold air made the candle between them flicker and dance. The murmur of the tavern quieted. Not quite a hush, but the enthusiastic gossip definitely lowered, and Thomas turned with John to look back across the room.

The front door was open, letting in the chill and blue light from outside. Several men in long, thick wool cloaks and white wigs were coming in and pulling off their gloves. One of them sported the gold facing buttons and cuff bands of an Admiral of the Fleet.


	9. Chapter 9

“Is that him?” John asked, leaning around Thomas to peer at the open door.

“I believe so.”

It was difficult to see much from where they sat, the tavern was dim and the crowd large, but Thomas would put the Admiral somewhere around John's age. His face was weathered, but pleasant. His wig was perfectly curled and stiff without a hair out of place, and his buckles were polished to a shine.

He was talking with a man at his elbow and Thomas stood to get a better look over the heads of the officers. Though he did not step out of their secluded corner. He felt suddenly unsure of himself.

Seeing Admiral Hennessy in person, even from a distance, somehow made years of confidence and experience fly out of Thomas's head. He felt ungainly in his stolen coat and ill-fitting shoes. He was too tall, and too thin, and he'd never fired a pistol and he suddenly couldn't remember what a Dutchmen's Pendant was. Should he ask John?

He began to fidget.

“I suppose I should go and introduce myself,” he finally said, and pulled at his waistcoat, trying to force the baggy thing into place.

“There's no need.” John pulled his pipe out of his coat pocket with a knowing twinkle in his eye. “He'll be along to see us, soon enough.”

Thomas supposed that was true, given the rumors John had just set loose among Hennessy's flock. Though the chatter was nowhere near the level it had been before the Admiral entered, the name James McGraw was still being passed around with quiet ferver, the men picking up their clucking as the Admiral and his officers settled at a table by the tavern fire. Hennessy was bound to hear it, and Thomas saw the exact moment he did. The Admiral's back stiffened, and his fingers tightened on the cup in his hand.

This is agonizing. Thomas thought, cursing his untimely nerves. He felt every inch as dumb and graceless as he'd been when he'd made his first suit to Miranda's parents and waited for their ponderous reply; clutching an ugly array of flowers and scratching at his stockings while he sweated. Only it was much worse because he wasn't here to propose an acceptable marriage. He was here because his affair with James had cost his lover his career and reputation and very nearly his life.

“What if he doesn't want to see me?” He turned on John. “What if he doesn't want anything to do with this? What if he takes one look at me and--” he waved at the door, unable to finish the sentence, imagining the Admiral storming out of the inn, and calling the watch or telling him he should hung for what he'd done to James.

“I'd take that as a good sign.” John mumbled striking a match and lighting his long wooden pipe. “If the Admiral is happy to see you he's probably in your father's pocket.”

Thomas sighed. It was true.

He was not sure if Hennessy had been approached about James “crimes”, but he would certainly know about it by now. Such things did not pass quietly, even among the Admiralty, and the charges, he was sure, would have been very specific. The only question was how Hennessy had taken the news.

Did he silently grieve on James behalf, or did he now think James dissipated, disgusting and monstrous? If Hennessy had been a principle in James's dismissal was he righteously glad and willing to do so? or was he forced?

From everything James had ever said about the Admiral, which was little enough, Thomas could only imagine the man hearing of James's discharge with great pain and regret, and he was staking both his own freedom and John's on that belief.

John thought him naïve, he knew, but Thomas was very aware of the stake he was gambling with. Hennessy may not be in his father's pocket, but he wouldn't need to be for this to go horribly wrong.

Either Hennessy was a good man, and would despise Thomas for what he and his father had wrought on James's life. Or he believed men like James were monsters, and then he would not be the kind of man Thomas would want love or approval from. So he must compose himself, because he was destined to remain wanting no matter what came about today; forever wishing they lived in a world where he could shake the Admiral's hand and be treated as a son by law.

John suddenly straightened in his seat, fatigue and amusement disappearing from his face as he focused on something over Thomas's shoulder. Thomas spun back around and found the Admiral standing just behind him, with hands clasped like a school teacher waiting for an explanation from a pair of naughty lads who'd skipped their Latin.

“Oh,” Thomas fumbled, and winced at the clumsy greeting. Then he gathered himself. “Admiral, it's a pleasure.” he held out a hand, heart in his throat. “I wish it were under better circumstance. I am--”

“I know who you are.” Hennessy replied shortly. He did not take Thomas's hand and after a moment Thomas awkwardly wiggled his fingers and dropped it to his side, becoming distinctly aware that he had not washed in two days.

“Of course. James, Lieutenant McGraw that is, speaks very highly of you. I wanted, that is, ah, would you join us?”

The Admiral slowly came around their table and sat with his back to the second wall, near John, so he was half obscured from the view of his officers. Thomas sat carefully across from him, and John slid over his own mug of ale without a word.

Hennessy eyed them both with a stiff expression that Thomas found difficult to interpret. It wasn't suspicious. Neither was it friendly. Thomas thought the Admiral's face seemed made for more amiable expressions then the one he was wearing. His wrinkles suggested a pleasant, if strick, sort sociability. Unlike John who tended to look a bit mad-cap when he was smiling.

“I was given to understand by the Lord Governor,” Hennessy said. “That you were taking a sabbatical.”

“Yes,” Thomas folded his hands on the table, for lack of anything else to do with them. “The Earl would prefer my ambitions be put aside in favor of more prudent opinions, but 'the object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, merely to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane,” he quoted Marcus Aurelius.

John choked on his pipe and started coughing. Thomas patted him lightly on the back, narrowly avoiding a savage peck from The Captain, and the Admiral frowned at them both.

“I know what is said about me, Admiral.” Thomas continued. “I was never bothered by rumor and gossip about my state of mind, or lack there of. My mistake was thinking that no one else would bother with it either, but if fighting for decency and human dignity, regardless of position or past mistakes is mad, then I believe England needs to redefine what she considers madness.”

“Lieutenant McGraw said you were gifted speaker.” Hennessy hummed. He did not sound confident that was a good thing. Thomas only smiled, suddenly lost in remembering long afternoons he'd shared with James arguing over the smallest things.

“That's a great compliment coming from him.” Thomas demurred. “No one has ever run me in so many circles James.”

“Yes, well, I'm not one mince words,” Hennessy rebuked lightly and tapped two fingers on table like a man counting the time. “I would like to know why you're here and what your intentions are spreading rumors among my officers, as you don't believe people should bother with such things.”

His fixed Thomas with an inscrutable look as spoke. All his attention had been fixed on Thomas in fact. He'd not looked at John once throughout their brief exchange, dismissing him as a slightly uncouth and eccentric servent perhaps. So it was a rather rude surprise when John answered for Thomas, leaping into the conversation with his usual insouciance.

“I should have thought that was obvious.” The old pirate bit his pipe. “Mr. Barlow wished to ask for your help, and I'm here to make sure he survives the experience.”

John's stress on their dubious safety grabbed the Admiral's attention with all the subtlety of an overturned carriage. Thomas wondered if suggesting your neighbor was going to have you killed was common among John's type of people, and how many awkward meetings that must make.

A sudden image of a dozen rough pirates sitting down to a garden party and making casual threats over their china, made his head ache. Though hunger might have something to do with that, Thomas thought and tried to drink deeply from one of the ales left on their table without making a statement of it.

Hennessy had turned the full power of his attention on John, who, like an old dog, bristled from top to bottom.  They made sight; the picturesque navy Admiral and a dissolute robber of uncertain character, looking like they were about to open fire on each other. At least John seemed ready to loose his gunners, as James would say.

Thomas briefly mused that his analogies had taken a distinctly nautical bent since meeting his love, and subtly took another drink in the ensuing silence.

He wished Miranda were here. Her observations were so often like a satirical play of manners, unflattering to everyone in the room but no less accurate for all that. What he would have given for her opinion on Hennessy tapping his fingers and John puffing impishly on his pipe as they stared each other down.

“And what kind of help does Mr Barlow think I can offer him?” Hennessy eventually asked, turning to Thomas with a look that suggested he did not think much of what he was seeing here.

“We need a ship to the West Indies. Harbor Island, or Port Royal.” John replied shortly, and Thomas gave him a look which John returned with a scowl.

“The Bahama islands?” Hennessy frowned.

“Yes.”

The Admiral leaned back, considered them both, and then shook his head.

“I'm sure your father could provide a suitable ship.” Hennessy said, and stood.

“My father doesn't know where I am, or where I'm going, and I would prefer he didn't find out.” Thomas stated bluntly, suddenly so afraid of Hennessy walking away that he failed to dress up the truth.

“So instead you've come to ask my help in using her majesties navy to circumvent one of the reigning lords in Whitehall in order to continue with your personal folly?” Hennessy asked, just as bluntly. He had not walked away though, so Thomas took his courage in his hands and pushed ahead.

“My father won't be an issue once we're out of London,” he insisted. “And what better place to see the reformation of piracy done then in Nassau herself. The problems with the islands will only continue to spread if not addressed. The war with Spain won't last. Sailors will be lost when they have no employment from the navy and if men have no choice but Piracy, than that is what they will turn to. It is our responsibility to provide them another option. We have an opportunity, Admiral, to make the new world--.”

Hennessy held up a hand, and Thomas stopped, noticing that John had half his face in his palm as if he was trying to hide from the situation.

“I can't help you.” Hennessy said, and there was a hint of regret in his voice but it was firm.

“All right then.” John reached for his crutch, a little quickly Thomas's opinion.

“John stop,” Thomas ordered. His voice much sharper then he intended, and the old pirate sat down again with a surprised look.

“Admiral please,” Thomas tried again. “I understand the position we've put you in, and I understand that as a matter of politics it would be better to stay in my fathers good graces right now than deal with me, but I don't think you want to do that.”

“You don't.”

“No. Because it would feel like a betrayal.”

Hennessy looked pained, as if he'd just suffered a wound. Thomas's heart thrilled and plunged at the same moment, hope and dread fighting to conquer the beating organ.

“James went to the Indies,” Thomas whispered. “With my wife.”

Hennessy's grip on the back of the chair tightened.

“And you wish to chase down some satisfaction for your public honor?” He suggested sharply. “With pistols perhaps, or a sword?”

“I do want satisfaction, but not that kind.”

He'd known it would come to this. That applying to Hennessy for aid would mean his fated depended on the kind of man Hennessy was. That he must reveal everything in order to pass this Janus and which of the gatekeeper's two faces would judge on him, and sentence him to the past or a new future.

Anything less then the truth would not keep Hennessy at their table.

He could not pass off this quest as a mere extension of political ambition. He had thought to warm to the subject, but Hennessy was not in a philosophical mood it seemed.

Politics and ideals of reformation would not sway an Admiral like Hennessy, not as James had described to him. Neither would a friendship between lord and liaison, however estimable, explain Thomas's need for the James. And guilt over James's dismissal from service would not be enough for the Son of an Earl to do anything out of his own way. Not for a mere lieutenant in the navy. Not even if Thomas was already a fugitive from his family. Especially then. For that would mean James was merely to tool to be used and cast aside when he ceased to valuable in Thomas's lowered condition.

Hennessy could not know that James's value was far beyond such material measures.

And selfishly, Thomas wanted him to know. He wanted to tell the unvarnished truth. He wanted say out loud that he loved a man, not as a brother or a friend but as a woman would love a husband, and a husband his wife. He wanted to say that he loved James McGraw to the man who'd as much as raised him from boyhood on his ship. He wanted, just once, to speak of James in public as he daily spoke of Miranda.

“Admiral,” Thomas began. “I think, I almost hope, that I am the last person on earth you want to see right now. I involved James in something I should have kept him out of. Perhaps if I hadn't had him for dinner that night. If I had confronted my father alone--”

He sighed. It was neither here nor there, but Hennessy was listening now so Thomas took a deep breath and kept going.

“The fault in this is mine.” Thomas said. “Entirely. I fell in love. I never should have let it happen, but I did, and I must face the consequences of that. The tragedy is that he loves me too. I am asking you to help me find him. For his sake, if not for mine. That is all I want. He and my wife _are_ my ambition.”

Hennessy looked around the dark tables, and the faces of young officers so busy chewing on the tasty news John had fed them that they weren't paying the slightest attention to their Admiral. Then Hennessy carefully sat down again and Thomas breathed.

“You say he went the West Indies?” the Admiral asked.

“Yes,”

“And you intend to leave everything. Your title, your wealth and aspirations and make a life in some cottage on the sand because you _love_ James McGraw.” Hennessy's expression became stiffer. “Forgive me, sir, but you'll understand why I find that difficult to believe.”

“I won't deny that I still have ambitions for the New World, but one doesn't need a title to find happiness Admiral.

“Though money helps,” John muttered around his pipe, ever practical. Thomas sent him a quelling look and continued.

“If James and my wife had taken a ship to Brussels, or Paris, or New York, or if they'd sailed all the way to the Barbary coast I would follow them there and never look back.”

Hennessy considered him for a long, heavy moment, then finally shook his head, as if exasperated by the antics of young men everywhere.

“James thought I would like you,” he said. Thomas's heart fluttered and then sank when Hennessy added. “I can't say I ever agreed with him... but, I will see what I can do. For him.”

“Thank you.” Thomas swallowed thickly.

“Why the change of heart?” John asked, sucking on his pipe.

Hennessy took a careful drink from his own mug. “You're sailor are you not?”

“Among other things.” John hedged

Hennessy turned to Thomas, leaning over his hand as if confiding something. “Sailors, as a lot, love stories. A favorite among the crews is a common girl falling in love with the son of a wealthy lord. Sometimes he owns plantation, or a mine, or he's the obscure cousin of some distant line of nobility, but the story is always the same.

They fall in love. They're discovered and the romance ends tragically. Sometimes they part in grief. Sometime one of them dies.” Hennessy played with the cup in his hands. “But in all the stories I've ever heard, not once did the lord give up his wealth. Not once, was he willing to live in poverty to be with the woman he purported to love.”

Hennessy drained his cup and stood. Thomas looked up at him, the candlelight glinting off his buttons and gold brocade.

“You understand if you father gets involved,” Hennessy warned. “There is nothing I can do.”

“I understand.” Thomas nodded.

“He won't have time to bother anyone for awhile,” John promised from the shadows.

Hennessy narrowed his eyes, and John blew out a slow stream of smoke which made him look ghostly. Thomas nearly forgot himself and demanded John explain what that meant, but the Admiral was standing there, listening, and they weren't done and he still needed him, so Thomas pressed his lips together and saved that question for another time.

John likely didn't mean anything by it, he told himself. His father would be busy quelling rumors and trying to tie up the ends of Thomas's business. After today the Earl wouldn't be able to strip him of his title without scrutiny. Which wasn't to say he wouldn't do it eventually, and Thomas had told the Admiral the truth when he said he was not bothered by the loss.

“Where are you lodging?” the Admiral asked.

“Oh,” Thomas stood. “Mr Flint and I are between accommodations at the moment,” he threw a look at John, to say they should acquire some. John puffed calmly on his pipe. “But if you would, you could leave a letter for us here. We'll be sure to come again.”

“Flint,” Hennessy had stopped and was frowning at John. “You're... Flint?”

“I am,” John replied, and his bird took that as a cue to flap its wings and squawk “pieces of eight!” loud enough for the whole tavern to hear.

“Flint,” Hennessy whispered again, and something changed in the Admiral. Thomas could not say what it was but the man turned both softer and sharper all at once. The manners of distance and unpleasant acquaintance gave way and Thomas caught a glimpse of the man he thought James must have known. Someone warm and solid.

He looked suddenly hopeful, and wounded so deep that the only way he could stand upright was by pretending he didn't have one. It was something he'd seen James do, once or twice.

“The Adventure will be sailing with a navy escort in a few weeks, they'll be in need of cook,” The Admiral said, quite suddenly. “I'm sure some accommodation can be made for Mr. Barlow. I'll see to it.”

The Admiral left them both then, returning to his own table by the fire with the senior officers.

Thomas felt as if he'd just missed an important bill on the floor of parliament and turned to look at John to see if he had any idea where the Admiral's sudden generosity came from. John looked just as mystified as he was.

The curiosity faded quickly though as they finished their meal, each of them devouring the stew and bread and cheese like starving men. John put his pipe away, wiping the hollow clean with a corner of his blue coat and rubbing at his exhausted eyes. He kept glancing back at the Admiral and his men as if he expected some foul play to be revealed at any moment.

“Are you all right?” Thomas asked when a flash of pain suddenly colored John's face. John laughed. It was sharp, and short and sounded painful.

“What sort of a question is that?” he drained his glass in one long gulp and then pulled Thomas's beer towards himself and looked ready to down that as well, before he stopped abruptly and stared at it as if it had just turned into salt water. Thomas had no idea what the old man was thinking.

He reached across the table and carefully laid a hand on John's arm, a gesture of comfort. John looked at Thomas's hand the same way he'd just looked at the tankard, and Thomas pulled away, worried that he was somehow hurting the old sailor. Perhaps he had rheumatism.

But then John was took his hand and ran his fingers over it. The contrast between them was sharp. Thomas's own hand, smooth and pale, and young. John's fingers were brown and cracked, wrinkled with age and weather.

“Did you mean any of what you said?” he asked, nodding back at Hennessy.

“Of course.”

“You weren't so keen on Brussels a few days ago.”

“You didn't tell me James and Miranda were in Brussels.”

“Hmm, no I suppose I didn't.” John pulled away and brushed at his bird's feathered head. She'd climbed down from his shoulder and was bobbing on the table. “The things we do for love, eh?”

“What would we be without love?” Thomas propped his head on one hand

“Better off probably.”

“John!” Thomas admonished softly, and John only shook his head. He seemed to be getting smaller somehow, the longer he sat there, and older too. His wrinkles were growing deeper and sagging at little, as if losing the  battle to hold him up.

“We really are nothing alike, are we.” John murmured to the air.

Thomas pursed his lips. “Actually I think we're a great deal alike, in some ways.” He couldn't suppress a smile as a thought fluttered through his head and he gave voice to it. “I wonder what James will think of you.”

John laughed. “He'd think I'm a shit.” When his laughter died down he looked up at Thomas and asked. “Is it wrong, to want to rewrite your tragedy?”

Thomas laced his fingers together, not at all sure what they were talking about and a little afraid of what John would do with his answer. He had the sudden sense that whatever he said was going to have tremendous weight.

“I suppose it depends on how one rewrites it,” he finally answered.

John laughed again, and stood, taking up his crutch. Thomas caught something that sounded like “rolling in their fucking graves,” as he hobbled away and Thomas got up and followed him with a shake of his head.


	10. Chapter 10

Thomas spent the anxious ridden weeks they waited for the Adventure pacing, and looking out the window of a small room in Wapping that John had procured. John was equally restless and irritated, often sitting with his forehead resting on the top of his crutch as if suffering from some head pain, or leaving their room entirely and coming back with clinking pockets.

Thomas tried very hard not to make an issue about where their weekly rent might come from. He was, after all, hardly contributing much himself, though the land lady did offer them a discounted rate in return for Thomas unravelling some of her late husband's accounts.

John's nerves turned particularly brittle whenever a crowd gathered for an exhibition of high sea criminals. He did not like being so near Execution Dock, which they could see from their window, but neither would he move to a more respectable neighborhood where, he insisted, Thomas might be recognized.

Thankfully there were only two hangings while they stayed in Wapping. Thomas did not think either of them could have endured more. For at each one John would take Thomas's place at the window and stand there transfixed and silent as the spectacle ran on. Thomas would worry about his health while shuddering at the curses of the condemned and the screaming of the spectators.

Afterward John would tell Thomas a story about the man who'd been hung. Thomas didn't know if the stories were true, but all of them made a point of desperate choices in desperate times which left Thomas much more sympathetic to the dead then he was sure the Deputy Marshall intended when reading out their crimes.

As the weeks dragged on John grew more vocal about how they should not have counted on Hennessy, and should be searching for a ship of their own. Thomas let him argue with the walls, and did not mention that with how particular John was about his ships he had some doubts if they would have ever left for Nassau at all.

The Admiral did send them letters however, all addressed to Mr. Barlow and Co. To let them know how things were progressing. He had also offered to put them up and pay for their stay in London but John declined for them both, assuring the Admirable they were doing well enough on their own and Hennessy didn't insist.

Finally, word came from Hennessy that he had procured them berths on the promised ship, which was bound for Virginia. It was part of a small company being escorted by a Navy sloop, bringing china and linen and others luxuries to the colonies. From there they would go south to the Indies, to take on sugar and tobacco and other unrefined cargo before the ship sailed back to England.

John would be taken on as cook, as promised, and Thomas's passage was paid for by the Admiral. He made a token protest, saying he would be happy to work for his ticket, but Hennessy did insist on this point. Though he added that if Thomas took it into his head to help with the ship's laundry, no one would say no.

The Adventure was carrying several unfortunates sentenced to transportation and indentured labor, but no slaves. John had refused outright to set foot on a ship with black cargo, telling the Admiral he could stuff his fine ship up his arse if that was all he could produce. When Hennessy stiffly declared that the Adventure was not a slaver, John said “It would have to do,” and stomped off.

Thomas tried to be more commiserating than amused at Hennessy's introduction to John's fastidious nature.

The day the Adventure was to set sail they met Hennessy on the dock near dawn, and the first tide. The Admiral was in plain clothes and a dark brown coat. His wig had been left behind with his uniform, revealing a nearly bald pate with a close cropped ring of white hair around his sides. Without a wig he looked like an entirely different sort of man. Still severe of face, but more rugged, and more common.

The chilly London morning left Thomas rubbing his hands together, but the Admiral seemed as unaffected by the weather as a stone piling. Thomas imagined great waves crashing against the Admiral with as little affect as they did on the Cliffs of Dover.

John was on the dock some ways away, absorbed in looking at the ship. His keen eyes leapt from tackle to rigging to bow to stern, and from man to man as the sailors loaded the last of their fresh cargo; precious apples and lemons.

“You've heard the news I trust,” Hennessy said shortly as he handed Thomas their slim tickets under the Adventure's looming hull.

“We've been keeping to ourselves,” Thomas said, shaking his head. “Anything further afield than the Blockmaker's brawl and I confess you'll have me at a disadvantage.”

“Lord Ashe is dead.” Hennessy said shortly.

Thomas fumbled with their tickets.

“I beg your pardon?”

“He was found some days ago, in his home. Stabbed with a knife they say. The story is that a local ruffian broke in looking to lay hands on the silver, and the Lord wrestled with the lout and lost.” The Admiral snorted, and looked over the busy dock, hands behind his stiff back; a picture of dissatisfaction.

Thomas carefully put his tickets into his coat pocket, smoothing them down and then clenching his hands in front of him, willing his heart to float back up from where it hand sunk past his navel.

“Does anyone really believe that?” He asked, gratified that his voice remained steady.

“No one with any sense or connection.” Hennessy replied. “I made some inquires as I'd had dealings with the Lord Ashe. It seems a silver reale was found in his mouth. Between that and the damn fruit there's no getting away from concerns about Spanish involvement. There are fears Lord Ashe may have taken bribes from Spain. That perhaps he was playing two ends against the middle, and one end found out. His associates, I understand, are deserting the connection like rats from a sinking ship, and I suspect it won't be long until rumors of treason reach the street.”

Hennessy did not sound concerned when he said this. On the contrary when Thomas looked at Hennessy he saw the face of a man who'd seen a friend's reputation and very sense of self ravaged by the likes of Peter Ashe, and though he may not know that Peter himself had a hand in it there was not one inch of remorse in Hennessy's face at the death.

“Fruit?” Thomas mumbled, stunned.

“Hmm, apparently there was a pomegranate half eaten on the Lord's plate when he was found, and whole a basket of them in the house kitchens.”

Thomas closed his eyes. Pomegranates did not grow in English soil, and they weren't popular in London society with the war. Though he did recall some distant obscure passage of a profit report saying that Spain had introduced the crop to the West Indies with great success.

He looked at John who was leaning on his crutch and waving a hand in some animated story to one of the salty old sailors. His bird, The Captain squawked loudly “pieces of eight!”

Thomas imagined what the weight of an eight reale Spanish coin would feel like. He wondered if Peter was alive when it was shoved in his mouth, and if he'd died with the taste of silver on his tongue.

“You knew him well, I understand,” the Admiral said stiffly, too polite for anything more than the utmost manners to be derived from his tone, least of all sympathy.

“He was a very good politician,” Thomas eventually said.

“Not good enough, it seems.” Hennessy tapped his fingers.

“We all have our blind spots. None of us can deflect a blow we don't see coming,” Thomas replied.

Hennessy hummed. “That may be, but among the Navy Mr. Barlow, one does not sail a captured prize back to England without making plans to keep her in hand the whole way there. A man who did not think to counter attempts to retake such a ship by its prisoners, would find himself left without action or any opportunity for advancement.”

“But I imagine,” Thomas said softly, not entirely sure why he was arguing the point, but feeling the need defend something of the ragged remains of Peter's character. Perhaps simply because it related to his own on this point. “That such an officer would be given some leniency if attacked by another ship.”

Hennessy frowned at him and eventually said. “It would depend on the ship, and circumstances.”

Thomas looked at John again, and the Admiral followed his gaze. Neither of them looked away from the old pirate when Thomas said, “A ghost ship.”

Hennessy was the first to turn away. Thomas expected some rebuff at his words, but the older man only cleared his throat, and Thomas wondered if even Admiral's and great Sea Lords believed in lost souls and sirens.

“Well,” Hennessy finally said. “It'll all come out one way or another I suppose, and someone will hang for it in the end.”

“Perhaps it will remain a mystery,” Thomas hoped.

Hennessy looked at him with a wary sort of pity in his eyes. “The murder or a Lord never goes unpunished, even if it remains unsolved.”

Thomas nodded. Hennessy pulled a thick envelope out of his coat and handed it him.

“When you find James,” the Admiral said “Will you give him this?”

“Of course.”

“And tell him that, in my eyes, he has always been a good man. Tell him I--” he broke off.

“I will tell him you love him,” Thomas said.

Hennessy shook his head as if exasperated but did not correct him. He shook hands with Thomas and left. Thomas watched him go, and when the Admiral had disappeared in the crowd along dock he turned and found John had been watching Hennessy leave as well.

Thomas swallowed, thought about Peter, and wondered if he'd caught his first glimpse of what John's world, Nassau, would be like.

  
~

  
He did not speak to John when they set sail and for a few days afterward. Peter's death and the novelty of being at sea and trying to get from his tiny cabin to the ship's latrine in the bow without falling over his feet, wholly occupied him.

The pitch and roll of the deck was difficult to accommodate, and while he was thankfully free from the sickness that gripped other passengers, it took some time before he could get about without trouble. Time he spent mulling over the nature of betrayal, what to do about John, and if, indeed, there was anything to be done at all.

He had no proof that John had killed Peter, and perhaps it was not so far fetched to think that among his other betrayals Peter might have made some deal with Spain that went horribly wrong, but he could not believe it. It was too convenient and he was certain that if an agent of Spain _had_ been at work, they would not have wanted England to know.

Whitehall would be in chaos for some time, parsing all the details and wondering if the coin in Peter's mouth was a warning to someone else. If there were other traitors, and who they were, and trying to prove themselves all innocent. It was exactly the sort of mayhem that John seemed to excel in.

He couldn't claim to be shocked exactly. It wasn't as if he didn't know what John was capable of and he'd seen him threaten Peter in his own home. But he had also begun to think of John as a friend, and that frightening aspect of the old man had faded behind grins and chatter and sad scowls. Thomas felt a little stunned by its reappearance, like a bird that had flown into a glass window and was toddering on the sill, one dazed step away from falling off.

It was a blessing they were no longer obliged to bunk together by circumstance. He was sure the strain would have been unbearable if he'd learned about Peter's murder when they were still in Wapping.

There was a small dining room set aside for passengers such as himself, and when they took meals it was John who brought their plates. He garnered a certain amount of gossip the first night, from those in the company who'd never seen a one legged man before, and Thomas, to his confusion, found himself snapping at them in John's defense. Telling them to keep such low gossip in their heads, if they must indulge in it.

He did not make any friends among them, but as his own mind was strained with the knowledge of murder, and other secrets, he found he did not care. Meals were, at first, torturous. Not least because when he accepted his food from John the old man would peer at him in silent question.

Then that damnable bird of his would start squawking “pieces or eight! pieces or eight!” and all Thomas could think about was Peter, dead in his study with and eight reale in his mouth. Like some awful tribute to Charon for ferrying the dead across the Lethe and Acheron. He thought about Peter's wife and daughter, and the ruin they'd be facing. He thought they didn't deserve that anymore then he deserved Bethlem.

Why had John done it? Thomas's mind wailed in the dark of his cabin to the creaking, callous boards of the ship. He supposed the turmoil created in London Society by this would hurt his father, The Earl, as he tried to extract their family from association with the Ashe name. It would certainly occupy a great deal of his father's time, that otherwise might have been spent looking for Thomas. Just as John had promised.

But why murder? It was an act Thomas could not fathom though he knew it happened everyday. He could not conceive of it being a solution to anything, or why, if it was a product of passion, rage or grief, John would have such feelings towards Peter and the Earl. Why was Thomas's life and interests such a concern to the old cripple?

A little over a week into their journey Thomas could keep to himself no longer and went looking for John.

  
~

  
‘Tis I, ’tis I, thine own true love, That sits all on your grave, I ask one kiss from your sweet lips, and that is all I crave.” John's deep voice echoed along the lower deck, bouncing off dark curved walls as he sang.

Thomas paused outside the door to the ship's galley, listening to another verse as he breathed the sweaty, salty damp of the ship, and gathered himself. He then entered, sidestepping a loose chicken and greeting John with an interruption in his song.

“He had a family,” he said. John looked up and blinked at him in confusion. Something dark and unwholesome twisted in Thomas and he stepped closer, boots clicking on the wooden deck. “Peter,” he clarified. “He had a family.”

“So did, you.” John said, and went back to his potatoes as if this meant nothing.

“Then is my father next on your list?” Thomas placed both hands on the table and leaned in, turning his head to catch John's eye under his long white curls. “Or my mother?”

“I've no intention of harming your mother.” John murmured, and cut deeply into a potato.

Thomas grit his teeth and bit out. “But my father is fair game? The Admiral?”

John tossed his potato halves into a pot, and picked another, beginning to peel it in long even strokes.

“I'm not entirely sure about the Admiral.” John said casually, as if they were discussing the weather. “After all, out of all the villains in this story, his name was apparently the only one too painful to speak of. He must have done something to warrant that, but I don't know what it is. Ashe though? He got what he deserved. You were in the way and you disgusted him, so he ended you, and I ended him.” John's cold blue eyes looked up from his vegetables, pinning Thomas to the table as if he were a butterfly in a naturalist's picture frame.

“You don't know that,” Thomas whispered, his mind filled with long evenings, sharing philosophy and wine with Peter, of visiting his home, talking about the age of reason and bringing sweets for little Abigail.

John smiled. It wasn't a nice one.

“A long time ago, or years from now depending on how you measure time, Peter Ashe had an opportunity. He could have taken what good fortune offered him, made peace with old acquaintances and gained influence over a very prosperous island. All it would have taken was a little honesty, but instead he held his secrets close and insisted on public exhibitions.

It all could have been done in the shadows. My captain and his woman could have taken a wagon to Savannah. Ashe could have made his case to the lords of England, but he wanted my friend to 'tell his story', knowing full well that such a story as his would get my Captain hung, or put in some English prison to rot. Ashe wanted him out of the way, but more then that, I think he wanted him humiliated and ridiculed. Perhaps because he privately could not stand the thought of two men fucking under god without shame.

It all went up in smoke because of that. His city burned. I lost my leg. The lady was shot dead. Now Ashe is dead, and believe me, the rat faced bastard deserved it.”

Thomas pressed his lips together and took a deep breath. “John,” he whispered. “You're not a judge.”

John didn't blink. “I've been that and more in my time. Judge, General, King, Scapegoat.” He threw another potato into the pot, more forcefully this time and picked up an orange tuber. “Whatever they fucking needed.”

“You don't even understand what is wrong about this, do you?”

“Well what's good for the goose is good for the gander as they say,” John declared cheerfully. “Lords and Earls and governors hang us, toss us out to sea, and commit you to hospital for madness on political and personal whims. I fail to see how this is any different. Carrot?” he asked, holding out the vegetable.

Thomas stepped away and turned his back on John, wiping at his mouth, feeling nauseous. Though it might have been as much from the roll and pitch of a ship at sea, as from John. After a moment, when the urge to lose his meager meal of biscuits had subsided, Thomas turned back around and posed the question that had been on his mind off and on since they'd met.

“You never answered me before.”

“Hmm?” John barely looked up from his peeling.

“When I asked why you came to help me.” Thomas said, and carefully took a seat across from John at his little table, crowding between barrels of hardtack and apples.

John sighed. “If you’re looking for reassurance I won’t betray you--”

“I know you won't betray me.” Thomas interrupted simply. Not saying that he almost wished he would because he was sure the guilt of John murdering men on his behalf would ruin part of him.

John looked up at him and that thin smile appeared as he bared his teeth.

“You know that do you?”

“Shall I tell you what I think?” Thomas asked.

“Have on Mr. Barlow.” John shrugged, returning his attention to his vegetables.

Thomas fingered a curling peal of potato skin. “I admit I've struggled to understand your interest in my life. I knew it was because of a man, who was clearly very dear to you. I thought he must have some influence, must somehow know my father and Peter, but not the admiral. At first I thought he must have been your employer, your Captain.” He amended. He suspected John's friend was dead, but shied from saying so.

“But you’ve been adamant that you're beholden to no one,” Thomas continued “and I don't think that what tied you to this man was so impersonal as rank or employment.” He leaned in, and looked old John right in his cold blue eyes. “You were angry when I didn't retaliate against Peter. He used your friend poorly and you wanted him to pay for it. Everything that you've done for me, what you did to Peter, that's in your Captain's name isn't it?”

John had stopped peeling, the knife in his hand stuck partway through shaving.

“You loved him.” Thomas sated. “You loved him so much, you've murdered for him. It's not just men like me and your captain that Peter hated, it's you too.”

Fine tremors were shaking the worn hems of John's sleeves, and the words that fell out of his mouth were said so softly they were almost lost in the distant shush of waves. “Sometimes I wonder.”

“Who was he?” Thomas asked. “Will you tell me?”

John carefully put aside his knife. Above him, his parrot ruffled its feathers. The ship listed to the right and the bird's perch swung in the wake with a creak, creak, creak.

“Do you know the story of Persephone?” John suddenly asked wiping at his hands with a rag, though they looked perfectly clean. “Dread Persephone they used to call her. He was always partial to Odysseus but sometimes he'd whisper about Persephone in my ear. Tell me how Hades pulled apart that red pomegranate and fed her the seeds from his own hand. Such a strange idea I used to think, that someone could _stain_ you and from that moment on you'd be wearing their colors on your soul. He haunted me like that. I suppose all this is my attempt to make sure he doesn't haunt me in death as well as life.

“What happened to him?”

“It ended and he went away.”

“He left you?”

John shook his head, grey hair bobbing in the dim light. “I gave him up, and he let me.” He looked at Thomas then, and there was a wistful sort of sadness about him. “I told him there would be _compensation_ , but he had no way of knowing it was true and that man did not trust anything he couldn't control.

For all that we took him in chains I've no doubt he could have ended it, if he truly wished. But he let himself be taken away and I think leaving me may have been the greatest expression of love he ever made. In the end he did care for us more then his revenge. Even if it was just for a moment, it was the right moment.” Then he smiled, his beard twisting up. “With any luck, I've insured that none of us will ever know that kind of suffering again.”

John was so odd in how he phrased things sometimes, as if what had already happened could happen again, but Thomas left that puzzle for another day, saying.

“I don't believe love should require suffering.”

He wasn't sure what John had described was love at all in fact, and John, as ever, was quick to catch his meaning.

“Well, perhaps it was only a disfigured form of love.” John gave him a dark smirk. “But it was more than I knew, or understood at the time. If it _was_ merely a shadow of what his love could have been, then thank god I never experienced the real thing, because I barely survived as it was.”

“That's not what I--”

“James McGraw's love for you was never violent.” He waved off Thomas's protest, then frowned. “I still don't know whether I envy you, or pity you for that. I suppose it doesn't matter, but I'm sure you'll be happy to know my wife agreed with you in any case.

She used to say that what lay between he and I could not be called love. Not because we were both men, and not because it wasn't potent or intimate. But because for one partner to subsume the other, to wound them continually, to make them feel they are not whole on their own... whatever that is, it is not love.

I took her meaning, but I never knew what else to call what was between us, because after a while friendship felt like a hollow word. So I called it love. A cruel love, perhaps. Like the sea, brutal and ferocious one moment and divine the next, as likely to kill you as take you across the world.

It's a terrible thing, loving something that's killing you. I imagine it is how acolytes feel toward their god. I could understand that, even as I understood all the ways it tore at me, and bruised me in places I had once been sure were untouchable. Perhaps that is _why_ I understood it.”

“And your wife?” Thomas prodded gently.

John smiled. It was so soft and genuine and Thomas couldn't recall ever seeing an expression like that on John's face before.

“Oh, if being loved by him was a storm, then her's was a harbor.” He breathed the word as if the mere sound of it was like coming home. “Her's and mine.” He laughed then and shook his head. “He would swallow you whole if you didn't keep a weather eye out, but her... with her it was somehow always calm waters. Even when we were being shot at. Even when we fought, and we did, bitterly sometimes. She was everything to me.” His voice cracked at the end and John reached for the potatoes again, peeling them savagely.

Thomas frowned, trying to follow John's twisting, backwards tale.  

“I don't understand you,” he finally admitted, rubbing at his temple.

“That's all right.” John grinned, but it looked forced and painful. “My old Mrs. used to say I only half understood myself a quarter of the time anyway.”

John started singing again and Thomas sat back, letting the familiar sad tune wash over him. He considered John, carving up potatoes as if he hadn't just admitted to murdering one of the most respected men in Whitehall and told tales of dead seaman, and lost loves.  

He felt horror, and sympathy, and great affection and a strange responsibility for the old man all at once. It was the type of feeling one had when finding a lame cat, spitting and hissing on your windowsill. The urge to take it it inside, and try to sooth the violence out of it. To care for it in ways it was unable to care for itself.

If James could hear him right now he'd be making that face, Thomas thought, which suggested he was afraid Thomas was a little bit insane. He supposed he was in good company for it.

  
~

  
That night, in his bunk, Thomas dreamed about Peter lying in his study with silver dollars dripping from a wound in his chest. John sat nearby reciting Sancho's last mad speech in perfect Spanish; insisting he and his master should “live many years,” and take up the life of pastoral shepherds, while calmly tearing open a pomegranate and popping seeds in his mouth. The juice had turned his hands so red it looked like he'd washed them in blood.

A shadowy figure stood just behind him with a hand buried in John's white hair. A sash was wrapped around it's face so all Thomas could see was a pair of mad green eyes. The door of the study had been replaced with black iron bars, and outside Bethlem waited, full of lost screeching souls.

When John held out a palmful of dripping red seeds to him, Thomas woke up gasping in his bunk and knocked his head on the low overhanging beam. He did not go back to sleep.


	11. Chapter 11

Terrible dreams became a regular occurrence for Thomas after that. Night after night his head filled with awful things; John killing his father and mother and his old school friends. He even dreamed about John killing James, and oddly, sometimes, James killing John. He'd wake up just before they died, with one of them always about to whisper some terrible secret to him.

He took to humming John's song and the whole voyage began to feel like a prison sentence after awhile. Everything was cramped and dark, and the days were dull and arduous. St. Nicholas Day passed while they were at sea, and then Twelfth Night and Epiphany.

Back in England his father's country house would be decorated with holly, ivy, bay laurel and rosemary. There would be roaring fires in every room, and guests and friends mingling with tinkling glasses of wine, enjoying mince pies, ducks, and capons, while here he was on an cold, wet ship. His clothes were stiff with salt, his fingers chapped, and he had nothing but hard tack biscuits for his empty belly and aching heart.

He wondered sometimes what the season would have looked like from inside Bethlem. Then he'd soften his biscuit in grog and chew it thankfully.

There was no way to really avoid someone on a ship he discovered, being packed tighter then Miranda's dress trunks as they all were, but it was still some time before he was in John's company again, and then it was only on the fringe.

Never short of words, John had begun telling stories to the crew to keep up spirits, and Thomas listened with the rest of them, while shaking his head at the improbability of wrestling sharks. Even the other passengers, tradesmen and priests, and the odd scholar came down from their cabins, drawn out of their boredom and bad tempers by John's stories.

Thomas watched them all laugh, and cheer and groan at the right moments, and felt more distant then ever from crew and company who were so happily taken in by the high seas adventures, which made their current misery seem more like glory waiting to happen. For someday they too might tell tales of adventure and stand apart from those who never went anywhere, or did anything.

Even those unfortunates in the lower decks, sentenced to transportation, heartened a little under the skills of John's telling. Perhaps the affable endurance of their one legged cook gave them courage, and hope that they too could survive the voyage and whatever came next.

The contrast between the somber figure Thomas had interrogated in the galley and the jolly old sailor he saw between decks was so stark that Thomas could not tell who was a more foolish audience; the poor ignorants taking every exaggerated saga as gospel... or himself, for feeling so superior and thinking he knew so much better. Which John was more real, after all? That terrifying figure who appeared out of mist, and confessed to murder over potatoes? Or the man who cooed at his parrot and told ridiculous stories about ghost ridden islands full of treasure to wide eyed powder boys?

When Thomas had found himself weighing contradictory men in the past, and trying to decide if the Lord Eddington were more likely to vote yay or nay on some bill of his father's, he usually found the truth of a someone's character was found in the middle of differing accounts. But with John, he could not shake the feeling that every side of him was playing Thomas for a fool. That the grim man he'd seen on the roadside near Bethlem, was as much a fiction as the affable cook. Each one pulled on like a costume when John needed them.

Rather then reassuring him that the murderous side was not his true character, this only increased the strain on Thomas's nerves. Because how could he make any judgement about John when he knew only facades.

He went back and forth as their voyage dragged on, about what he should do once they reached the new world, and whether he really had another option then accepting John's devilry. It was a hard thing to admit.

The type of man Thomas had believed himself to be would not have set sail with John. He would have taken John to a court of London, and let the Adventure go west without them. He would have brought the murder of Peter before an honest judge. He'd have brought the whole affair before the Admiralty, and not only John's small part but Peter's and his father's. Because before all this Thomas had believed that justice would be served if one had the courage to stand up and tell their story, and demand it.

Now, he found himself thinking about the last dinner he had with his father, and his disapproving voice saying “this isn't your damned salon, Thomas”. And he was sailing off to the indies, leaving Peter's wife and daughter to mourn, his father in the middle of a scandal, and entertaining the idea of doing nothing at all with John's part in it.

What kind of man did that make him? He didn't know. He was so much less sure of himself than he had been, and he did not know how to reconcile the fact his only driving force now was a personal desire to see James, and Miranda. He did not imagine he would even write to his father about Peter's murder. It was, he suspected, a secret he might take to his grave.

He felt like a failure to his own ideals.

Such thoughts kept him awake night after night along the bad dreams, and he took to wandering the ship when he could no longer stand the swinging of his hammock, or the dull thud it made against the bulkhead. He was getting a very unsightly bruise on his hip and shoulder from the number of times he'd slammed into the wall.

One night he was taking such a stroll, when he passed the goat pen. John had told him with a smirk, shortly after setting sail, that if he wished to retain any of his lingering innocence he would avoid that pen in the wee hours. Thomas, in a pique at the time, had naturally done the exact opposite and now he knew things about men and animals that he'd never imagined. It was eye opening, certainly.

But the noise coming from the pen now was not the lustful, frustrated grunting he'd heard before. It someone was crying. It was very soft, and muffled by the hay and the shuffling of the dairy goat, but it was unmistakably crying.

Thomas did not think about how a man of the sea might take offense at such things being seen. Nor did he think about how such a man might fear it would used to mock him, and that in a life where reputation was currency mockery could be as deadly as being beaten at the gratings. He only thought to offer some small comfort to the weary soul, whom he felt an instant kinship with in his own troubles.

He thought it would be one of the cabin boys, or a young sailor sick for home and family. The last thing he expected to see when he leaned over the pen was John, and he gaped in astonishment.

John was on sitting with his back to the wooden pen, his one good knee drawn up and holding his elbow, while his hands twisted around a bit of string. His head was bent and his hair obscured the worst of him but Thomas could hear his ragged breathing. His crutch was on the far side of the pen, out of easy reach. As if it had been thrown there in some fit of emotion. His parrot was sitting on the fence above him, bobbing its head and uncharacteristically silent as it sidled back and forth.

“John?” he asked cautiously, and swung a leg over the pen, thinking that John might have hurt himself, and was unable to get up now. Perhaps he'd fallen.

John's head snapped up when he spoke and Thomas paused just inside the fence, taken aback by the wretched sight. John's eyes were red, his skin was blotchy, covered in snot and wet tear tracks and he had a vacant, almost dead look about him.

“Oh fuck,” John swore and began scrubbing at his face, trying to wipe away the evidence. He only succeeding in smearing it, and ended up looking more wild then before. His hands were shaking and his breathing was poor. Thomas carefully crouched beside him, not wanting to startle the old man. The stink of rum was prevalent but there was none on John's breath.

“What is all this?” he asked as gently as he could, laying a hand on John's arm.

A brittle noise escaped John.

“Libations,” he croaked, waving at a wooden bowl by his foot with rum sloshing inside, “to her ancestors for... fuck if I know, advice, absolution. They say an improper funeral calls down trouble and I don't know what any of this is but trouble, and I--” John broke off with a watery sob, and covered his mouth with a fist. His knuckles clenched around the string he held, which was pressed to his lips like a rosary in prayer.

Thomas very carefully picked up a loose end, and turned it over in his fingers. It wasn't string, he realized. It was hair. A dense, fluffy grey hair that curled even tighter then John's in little zig-zags. It had been twisted into a single string, and there were several beads tied into it. This close he could smell a hint of something sweet and milky that made him think of Miranda's perfumes, but it was like nothing that came from France, and he wondered if John had packed it in some tiny box to keep it safe from the stink of London. He thought about how precious it must be to him, to do so.

John was watching him with red rimmed eyes and when Thomas looked up again John said, “In a fair world you'd either never love at all or perish the moment you lost them. Because living beyond that is fucking torture.”

“Your wife?” Thomas asked, making a guess about the origin of the hair and settling himself next John, pulling up his knees to mirror the man.

John nodded and his fist shook. “There should have been a funeral. I didn't think of it at the time. I couldn't think of anything because I... I couldn't fathom being there without her. They won't drum, there'll be no procession or dancing. Fuck, they'll probably think we sailed back to Bristol.”

“How long has it been since she...” Thomas trailed off.

John shuddered. “A day.”

“A day?” Thomas winced at the incredulity in his own voice, but really he'd been with John for two months and--

“The day before I washed ashore here.” John clarified. “No matter how much time passes it still feels like yesterday.”

And oh. Oh that was awful, Thomas thought.

“The frogs were singing,” John said, more to himself then Thomas. “She was telling me about Adu Ogyinae. I was so warm, I missed that when we were in England. I fell asleep and when I woke up she was cold. It didn't make sense to me. Even when she grew stiff and the flies came in, it didn't make sense.

I took her body down to the beach and set her in one of our Doreys, then rowed out. When we reached deep water I dropped the oars over the side, pried loose a spar, and lay down with her. Then I let the sea take us both.”

He blinked as if he was waking up and looked at Thomas. “If anyone tells you drowning is a peaceful way to go they're fucking liars.” He sniffed, and a bit snot dribbled into his mustache. “Then I woke up here, before any of it fucking happened.”

“You think you died?” Thomas tried to say it as gently as he could and the tiniest frown marred John's wrinkled brow. Thomas sighed, not sure what to do about this bout of senility, except let it play out, and keep John and the goat away from the rum he'd poured. Perhaps he could get John to a hammock later.

“We sailed Madagascar and Malabar.” John murmured. “We harried slavers at the Bight of Benin and hunted with Corsairs off Tripoli. We saw the world together.” He smiled. “I think between the two of use we must have lived enough for a hundred men, stealing happiness like old Pew used to steal gold out of the pockets of the church. We were _happy_.”

John tilted his head back, looking at his parrot ruffling its feathers above them.

“He didn't believe we would be.” John pointed at the bird.

“Oh?” Thomas hummed, and did not ask if John was using the bird as a euphemism, or if he was being literal because he honestly wasn't sure which way John was tilting just then.

“I don't think he truly understood what she meant to me. Perhaps he couldn't bear to, for all he liked to talk about keeping one's eye on two points at the same time,” here he smirked at Thomas, as if sharing some private joke, and then his face turned dark again and a new tear worked dribbled down his wrinkled face.

“That was what he tried to sell me, at our end, that my life with her would grow stale without him. I _knew_ he was saying it to wound me, manipulate me, and he had cause, but the thing that always made him so dangerous was that he never said anything he didn't believe was true. Even when he was only saying it to turn a situation to his advantage. Rather revealing, when you consider that.

I sometimes wish... but there's no use in that. She wanted freedom. He wanted to suffer, and make what he hated suffer and he used her people to do it. When he failed, they would have been the ones to get the lash, and when they ceased to be useful to him or got in his way, they'd have died, just as others died before them. Whatever affection he had for her, for my sake, and I believe he had some, it did not matter against the demons in his mind.”

John broke off then, and pressed a fist against his mouth as if to hold back his words, but it seemed he was no more capable of that than a hulled ship was of keeping water from leaking through its seems.

“When I thought of her being drawn in and becoming what I was to him, subject to his demons, enthralled by them, dying from them ... I don't know if I can convey what that did to me.”

John's hand suddenly dropped from his lips, and his face grew still.

“You think these are horrible things to say,” John whispered, gaze still fixed on his parrot as if he'd been making his confessions to that feathered menace, and Thomas was not there. “You believe that when I feared her taking my place it was jealousy. Perhaps I was afraid of losing her affections or his.” His voice took on a mocking tone. It was so slight Thomas might have missed it if he hadn't spent so much time listening to John, and learning the cadence of his stories.

“I haven't known you for long,” Thomas said. “But in the time I have, you've never been that simplistic, John.” Thomas traced his own lips for a moment, before dropping his hand just as John had, and a whisper escaped him.

“I know what's like to love someone who can harm you. I know what it's like accepting pain you're familiar with, because you believe the cause is worth it and who better to fight then you, who are a veteran in such... obscure, unromantic battles.” He thought about sitting at his dining table, with the wood stretching between him and his father like a miniature black sea. “I know the terror of seeing someone else you love step into that breach.” James was pushing his chair back with a screech. James was standing, and declaring he found The Earl Alfred Hamilton _wanting_. “Its easier to struggle through something we know well. It feels like nothing. Only when someone dear to us is facing that same fight, do we realize its _not_ nothing, and then the impossible suddenly becomes plausible.”

John's head rolled against the side of the pen. “It doesn't matter in the end. She's gone,” He cried then, fat salty trails squeezing out of his shut eyes and working down his face to mingle with the snot in his beard. He was muttering, and his words were becoming more broken and disjointed. “Better I never knew her.” He shook a little, then blindly reached out and snatched Thomas's sleeve. “You've done that for me.”

“Have I?” Thomas winced, startled

“I thought it all out. By saving you I'll save myself. From them, from him, from all the things done in your name. From ever knowing _this_.” He rubbed at his chest in a broken, stuttering circle, and Thomas could almost feel the ache in sympathy. “He won't need to fuck England if he has you,” John muttered to himself. “He won't need gold. He won't need me, and if I never know him I'll never meet her. If, by some wild chance, I do than it won't be the same. Because what I had with her wouldn't be possible for the man I was before him.”

“ _That_ is the tragedy you want rewrite?” Thomas squawked, deeply unsettled.

“I fixed it all now.” John whispered in his broken madness, and suddenly looking peaceful in dementia. “Perhaps, I'll never even come to Nassau.”

“Don't talk like that,” Thomas interrupted sharply, afraid for John's health and more then a little frightened of the notion of trying to reach the indies without him, whatever his own confused feelings on the man's crimes were. “Of course you'll reach Nassau.”

He immediately knew he'd said the wrong thing when John turned wild eyes on him.

“You think so?” He gasped. “You think this has all been for nothing?”

“I only meant,” he began slowly, wanting to placate in his companion, “You'll reach shore on _this_ ship, here and now, you and me.”

“Oh, yes,” John sighed and leaned back, his head hitting wood with a thump that rattled the pen. “Yes there's no need to worry about that, I'll get you to Nassau.” Then he smiled a little, though it looked unsteady and he scrubbed at his face again. “There is some comfort there I suppose, no matter what else happens I won't be sending anyone to meet you in Elysium at a sugar plantation this time.”

“And here I thought I died in Bethlem.” Thomas said lightly, trying to tease his friend back into some semblance of sanity.

“You did,” John replied, dead serious. “For all that mattered. Everyone that knew you thought you were dead, or claimed you were dead and stories make the world we live in. So as far as the world was concerned Thomas Hamilton died in Bedlam of a broken heart. Which was published as a severe chill to hide the implication you were killed by that insanity they call treatment. No one ever told stories about a prisoner in Savannah. He was just one of many family embarrassments put away to be forgotten. Your Lieutenant and your wife believed you were dead for ten years.” John looked him. “Imagine what that did to them.”

Thomas did and it made his heart ache. He did not know what to say after that. He'd become used to John speaking of things that hadn't happened as if they had, weaving truth and fable together like Arachne. Thomas wasn't always certain what John was trying to tell him but he had accepted that it was John's way of speaking.

So he wrapped John's wrinkled old hand in his own and asked him to tell him more about his wife, while he silently schemed how to get his friend into a proper bunk. John told him about sailing off the coast of Africa. About strange kings and golden stools and burning Dutch ships. He told him about the first time his wife called him a spider. He told him how they would hold each other in the rushes and under stars on the sand.

John talked until his voice began to croak, his eyelids drooped, and finally he slumped over in exhaustion. Thomas stayed with him in the pen until he heard men of the crew begin shuffling about, and the dawn bell rang.


	12. Chapter 12

Thomas's nightmares took on a different cast after that. He dreamed of John drowning, and being pulled to the bottom of the sea by wrecked ships in the shapes of broken hearts. Or sometimes that John was a spider, lost among the buckled heels of society and Thomas was simultaneously trying to catch him, and direct his fellow lords and ladies away from the poor thing so it didn't get crushed by expensive buckled shoes.

The silence and tension that had marked the beginning of their voyage faded, though it was not forgotten. Thomas was not sure if he and John drifted to each other's side amid decks and duties because they truly enjoyed each other's company, or because their nerves didn't like not knowing where the other one was and what they were doing. Thomas's concerns were half for John's mischief and half for his health.

Two months after setting sail from London they reached the Chesapeake Bay and Thomas got his first look at the New World. It was beautiful and he was eager to go ashore and see it for himself, for as lovely as the view of Jamestown and its marshes were from the bay he would have liked a closer inspection. He was told to mind his business however and none of the passengers were allowed off ship. Only John went ashore with a few of the crew to secure a compliment of fresh food, and their stop was brief, just long enough unload and resupply.

John told him later, while sharing a bowl of gritty meal called Hominy, that he didn't plan to leave the Adventure until they reached Barbados. He was not keen, he said, on trying to sail down that long Spanish coast by himself. Thomas had to agree, and so their journey dragged on.

He took his meals in the galley with John, away from the other passengers, and he took to writing down his thoughts and observations to fill the time. He borrowed pen and ink from the ship's chaplain and filled the pages of a thin leather journal John brought him from Jamestown.

When they finally reached the West Indies they'd spent so much time together that it wasn't strange when John argued the Captain into allowing Thomas to accompany him ashore at Barbados, ostensibly to help him buy rum for the men. After all he said, as they clambered into the longboat with Thomas holding his crutch in one arm and steadying John with the other, he had developed such a rapport with Mr. Barlow. John was an old man and crippled, he couldn't possibly carry everything they needed himself, and Mr. Barlowe didn't mind looking after him like some of the crew.

This was a lie of course, because everyone on the crew loved John.

For himself, Thomas was ecstatic simply to walk on shore. He had never been so grateful to stand on dry land and thought for a moment his legs would give way because it was so solid, and the lack of the pitch and roll made him a little dizzy. John kept a tight grip on him and did not slow their pace until they'd slipped from the rest of the refitting crew in a surge of the crowd. Thomas found it hard to believe it was really so easy to desert the ship, but John had merely shrugged.

Then again, he supposed it was easy to be distracted by all the strange, fantastic sights offered by this world. Barbados was a revelation; loud and full of color and smells he could not begin to name. Men carried giant lizards on their shoulders, and women with tattooed cheeks stared at them over baskets of strange fruit. John seemed entirely at home among the heat and grit and strange dark faces, while Thomas could not stop staring at it all.

John didn't let him linger. Once on the far side of port the old man stole a single masted Cog, which was so small it barely fit the two of them, and then sailed them right out of the bay onto open water. This, John said, would be the hard part of the journey.

They sailed up the windward isles. John manned the rudder, and Thomas, at his direction, learned how to douse a sail and tack, and spent a lot of time hauling on ropes he could not remember the name of. It was exhausting work. His hands became chafed, his skin burned and his clothes were completely stiff with salt.

He often thought about the last night he spent with James, before all this, and how he and Miranda had been licking salt from every crack in James skin, laughing and asking how on earth he managed to get it absolutely everywhere. James had merely smirked. Now Thomas understood why. Now he dreamed about James and Miranda licking the salt from his own skin when they met again, when he wasn't dreaming about John lost at sea with only parrot to guide him.

They stopped in Antego for supplies, which involved John teaching him how to lift unattended purses at a tavern, and assuring him in an amused voice that since the gold was already stolen and clearly their need was greater, there was nothing to feel guilty about. Thomas still felt queasy. Especially once they were back on open water and John admitted that among pirates, thieving was a killable offense.

Thomas yelled at him all the way to Tortuga. John was, mostly, unrepentant.

At night they camped on small hidden beaches. John had an unprecedented knowledge of secret stashes among the islands, and after Antego he kept them well supplied as they made they're way past Crooked Isle and through the Salt Keys.

It was so warm that Thomas slept in his shirt sleeves and never needed a blanket. He discarded his cravat, left half his waistcoat unbuttoned from the heat, and was still sweating. He tried to keep shaving with John's knife, but without a mirror it was patchy business and he soon gave it up for a lost cause and allowed his stubble to grow in. It was itchy, and he longed to reach Nassau and feel James's callused fingers shaving it all away in smooth stripes.

The closer they came to New Providence, the quieter John grew. Which of course for John meant he talked more then ever. He told stories about about dreadful storms, starving doldrums, and Portobello, and the more he talked the less genuine his smile became. It did not escape Thomas that of all the stories John told, not one of them was about Nassau.

Thomas did try to speak with him about Peter and his Captain and his wife, but John sidled away from those subjects, talking around them just as he talked around Nassau. When he did let something slip, it never made anymore sense then his other tales and ghost stories, and Thomas told him this John's old face crinkled up and he said,

“Well, Nassau was just a stretch of sand, like any other. Most of its value was in the stories it inspired. Legends begetting legends.” 

~

After all his traveling Thomas had thought he now had some grasp of the wild atmosphere and exotic clash that made up shipping ports, but it was nothing like the pirate haven they finally reached. London's Mudlarks, the harbor of Jamestown and even Barbados still carried some lingering, tenuous sense of civilization.

Nassau was complete chaos.

There wasn't even a dock. Just an open beach with haphazard planks of wood stretching into the water here and there in a half-hearted effort at a jetty. Boats were strewn about willy nilly, and the sand was covered in camps; flimsy tents, open fires, bottles and offal and debris.

He helped John row their little skiff to the beach, dragged the prow of their boat onto the sand, and when he turned around the first thing he saw was a half naked man with his dick in hand taking a piss right in front of him.

He stared. He might have stared a little longer then he should have in fact, at the dark bobbing prick which had been burned as brown as the rest of the seaman, and the tattoo blackening the skin right next to his balls. The man wasn't wearing any pants, and his shirt was open down to his naval, giving Thomas quite a view. Thomas considered himself a liberal man, but even his liberal mind was shocked.

When he looked up the seaman was glaring openly at him and reaching for a large fishing hook. Thomas opened his mouth to make his excuses. Then a green glass bottle went sailing past his head, forcing the pirate to duck as John yelled at him. He called him a “Scurvy Swab,” and to him to “put his pin away before he had him dancing at the gratings.”

The pirate looked like he wasn't sure what had just happened. He wasn't a particularly large man, and his expression had a blank sort of confusion to it. He must have seen something in John's face though because after a moment he stumbled away up the beach scratching at his bare buttocks.

Thomas attempted to recover himself while John looked at him like he wasn't sure who was stupider, Thomas or that pirate. Then he sighed.

“Give me a hand,” he said, waving at Thomas, who hurried to help him out of the boat. This was made difficult by his bird flapping its wings in his face of course. John quickly got his crutch under him, once they were both on the sand and started hiking inland towards the stinking mess of tents. He gave no care to their trusty little boat, leaving it untied on the beach like any other piece of flotsam.

Thomas looked at the boat with a small stab of regret then tipped his chin heavenward for a moment, took a deep breath which he instantly regretted due to the smell of nearby urin, and then followed John inland.

Thomas had expected he would have to ask after James and Miranda once they arrived. After all, John might have learned they were headed for Nassau while in London, by whatever mysterious means he had, but surely there was no way to know where they'd go once they landed. None of this had been planned, and if James new anyone left on the island after the navy deserted her then he'd not had time to tell Thomas.

John seemed to know exactly where to go though, and so Thomas followed him cautiously as his friend struggled across the sand, his crutch sank deeply into the beach with every step. His parrot bobbed about on his shoulder like a buoy rising and plunging with high waves and Thomas walked slowly to keep pace with him as John slowly lurched into the ramshackle town above the beach.

It was strange, walking through this haven of piracy. He thought of all of the pamphlets he'd read and the reports he'd received describing it as a lawless brawling place filled with nothing but devils and rogues, and the worst sort of men. His experience with the trade could be summed up in letters on the account books, and winding discussion about rationalism and naturalism and the dignity of man in his salon.

His expectations had been as distant as those printed words, and never included women standing on balconies in little more then under-things, with breasts hanging in the open for all to see. Scarred men, both ugly and handsome smoked and drank. Gibbets had been taken down and were being used as fishing nets.

In the dusty square in front of a large house that must have once been white but was now covered in the blackened stains of fire and smoke, were four posts that had been erected with the decaying bodies of a man, woman and two children. They were in a state of advanced decay, nearly skeletal, and their once fine clothes hung like rags, old lace flapping gently in the breeze.

Governor Thompson and his family. Thomas was sure of it.

There was a young woman, perhaps fifteen or less, with bright blond hair staring up at the bodies. She was the only one within a hundred feet of the display and from the open door of the governor's residence poured a cacophony of reveling noise and a cloud of opium smoke.

Thomas knew he should move along, but his feet seemed incapable of doing so. He hadn't known the governor personally. The man had been appointed by his father, The Earl, years ago. Thomas knew him only through signed reports and pamphlets the occasional letter. He thought about how he'd been planning to have the man replaced, and swallowed.

The girl seemed to sense his stare, because soon she turned and look at him over her shoulder. Her face was as cold and still as the dead children on those pikes.

Thomas inclined his head in a small bow to her and she frowned before cautiously returning the gesture, almost as if she didn't recognize it. Thomas backed away then, joining John where he'd stopped to wait and rest a little ways away. The girl's eyes followed him.

“This is my property,” Thomas murmured, looking back at the hanging corpses. It was one thing to read about it, to hear about it from the navy, or even your lover, it was quite another seeing it person.

“First thing to learn about Nassau,” John said hitching his crutch under him again. “Is that it's nobodies property.”

Thomas swallowed. “What now?” he asked.

“We'll need horses, to get to the interior. There's a settlement near one of the plantations, by the Bay road.”

“No there isn't,” a young voice interrupted from behind them, and Thomas looked up with John, both of them startled to see the girl had come to stand near them, with hands stuffed into the front pockets of her skirt.

John frowned at her. “What do you mean?”

“You're looking for the homes of farmers, yes? Near the sugarcane fields. Those were burned down two years ago, along with just about everything else.” She scoffed at their ignorance of this, and perhaps also in anger of it. “I doubt at this rate,” she looked around the street at the drunk men lounging in the sun, “they'll ever be rebuilt.”

John closed his eyes in the universal expression of self condemnation. “Fuck,” he whispered then turned around and put on a sharp, false smile. “Well, you seem well informed. Perhaps you can help me find an acquaintance mine, newly arrived on the island. A Mrs. Barlow.”

“I can't say I've heard of her,” the girl allowed and raised an eyebrow. A very unimpressed eyebrow. Thomas recalled when he had been her age and he'd perfected a similar look, but his adolescent superiority had nothing on this girl.

John nodded, looked thoughtful, and then asked, “What about Captain Flint?”

Thomas did a double take, wondering why John would ask about himself. If perhaps this was some trick to frighten the girl into revealing something. Though if John was well known, which Thomas had supposed he was, well, that seemed rather out of character for the man he thought he knew. For all his boasting John seemed to feed on anonymity and mystery the way other man fed on wine and meat. But Thomas pressed his lips together and said nothing, determined to see where John was taking this.

“No, don't know him either,” the girl said. “Is he a pirate?”

“Are there any other kind of men on this island?” John replied with a tart flavor in his voice.

The girls face turned colder. She would have done Duchess Omwell proud Thomas thought.

“No, not really.” She pointed at a dusty red tavern. “You can look in there or across the street. Most of them like to get drunk before fucking, or fuck before drinking.”

John thanked her and began hobbling down the sandy road toward the tavern without looking back. Thomas followed and once they'd left the girl behind, he fixed John with a very pointed look.

“Flint?” he asked.

John's smile reminded him of the grotesques in Temple Church.

“Are you finally starting to wonder if I would betray you?” the old man asked.

Thomas sighed, shook his head and was arranging his opening argument in his mind, when John reached the open tavern door. He pushed through just in time to avoid Thomas's next words, which were instantly lost in the hubbub of clinking tankards, scraping chairs, scuffing shoes and the murmur of dozens of rough voices.

Then Thomas forgot what he was going to say entirely, because the moment he stepped over the threshold he saw her; a woman sitting with her back to the door and creating an island of grace amid that course sea of thieves merely by her straight backed poise. Thomas would have known that elegant bearing and slope of neck anywhere and thought his lungs might have forgotten how to work.

Miranda wore a dark brown dress and a faded red shawl with narcissus embroidered in white; flowers that were said to grow along the banks of the river Styx. The last flower Persephone reached before being seized by Hades. She was just as beautiful as she'd been that day, months ago, when he last saw her at dinner, though she had no diamonds or pearls, and her hair was pulled up in only a simply knot like a maid's.

“This is where I leave you,” John said quietly from behind him.

“What?”

Thomas snapped out of the thrall that had come over him and spun on John, heart dropping straight into his boots. His fears and dark dreams from their voyage across the Atlantic returned in full force as John shrugged and said,

“What you make of things from here, is up to you.”

Thomas grabbed John's arm before the old man could shuffled aside, leaving them both blocking the doorway and looking like shadows against the overbearing sun outside.    

“But you must stay,” Thomas implored, thinking this was obvious. “You've done so much for us, you've sailed across an ocean with me. You must meet Miranda, and James.”

John shook his head and his eyes took on the strained look he often wore. The parrot on his shoulder ruffled its feathers.

“No.”

“John--”

Thomas fisted John's sleeve in his fingers, holding tighter, torn between the desire to race into the tavern and sweep up his wife in his arms, and the fear that if he let go John would slip away like so much smoke.

He had never asked John what his plans were, once this was done. He'd wanted to, but he'd been afraid, all those nights they spent sleeping on beaches and in the belly of their little Cog. Part of him felt sure if he asked John that the man would break in some irreparable way, and Thomas did not want to hurt him. Thomas was no sailor either. He would never have reached Nassau without John.

But now they were here and John was saying goodbye and he felt so fragile under Thomas's hand, almost insubstantial. Thomas had the horrid premonition that once John walked away from him, he would cease to exist and something miraculous would disappear from his life as suddenly as it had appeared.

“I still don't have more then half your story.” He tried to stall.

John grimaced, like he meant to smile but it got caught on something halfway.

“The thing about stories,” he said slowly, curling his fingers over Thomas's hand on his coat. “Is they become unbelievable over time. I heard a lot of stories about you. I didn't really believe them. I thought surely some of it had to be exaggerated, by loss, by memory, by who the fuck cares. I found some comfort in that. After all, what living man can compete with the immortality of a memory?”

“John--”

“I always had this lingering fear... because the Thomas Hamilton I'd heard of didn't seem like the type of man to muddy his conscience with corrupted men who murdered their crews. I wanted to believe that hardship and violence would break you, because then, maybe, you could love the man he became, not just what he was when you knew him.” John extracted his sleeve from Thomas's loosened grip and pulled his crutch more firmly under his arm. “Its a relief to know you were never that fragile or unbending in the first place. I don't need to worry I sold him a fantasy anymore. Thank you for that.”

“Who was he?” Thomas whispered, eyes boring into John's.

“You know who he was,” John replied softly.

“Why can't you stay?”

“It's not my time anymore.” John looked away and his gaze settled on older slave with notches in his cheeks, a strange sort of longing in his face. Then he turned and reached up, as if to wipe some grit from his shoulder, saying “but perhaps, you would take care of an old friend for me.”

John made a sign with his hand and the old parrot on his shoulder stepped dutifully onto his wrist, ruffling it's feathers. Then with great ceremony John held the bird out to Thomas, who swallowed, his throat suddenly clogged up as he gingerly took the bird.

“Go on now.” John nodded at the tavern and then swung around on his crutch. “They're waiting.”

Thomas didn't want it to end. Not like this.

“Tell me one thing?” he pleaded, holding The Captain as gently as he could. John paused and Thomas took a breath. “Did you really do all of this so you would never fall in love?”

“Perhaps,” John replied.

“ _John_ , that's simply a different tragedy in the making.”

“Then I suppose you'll have to save me from it,” John whispered.

“How can I do that if you leave,” Thomas pleaded, clinging to what a sane man would believe.

That John was old and had been born long before Thomas. That all his stories had already happened. That he never knew James McGraw as anything more then a navy Lieutenant who came to the Hamilton's door while John was spying. That there was no history in which in Thomas died by a well crafted story, or where he was exiled to a plantation in Savannah. Or where Peter lived to be the Governor of the Carolina colony, and Miranda was “lost” because him.

He was afraid he knew what James would become in such a world, and he was afraid to think that one day John might come across his path again but Thomas would not know him. He was afraid to wonder if this was all the hand of god, or something else entirely. He was afraid to think there was no escaping tragedy, but that one simply circled into another.

John smiled at him, his craggy face breaking up like the crumbling of stones falling off a cliff. Then he took one last look at the old slave by the bar, turned around, and walked away. His crutch thudded on the ground and Thomas stared at the back of his long blue coat just as he had on that road in Moorfeilds, feeling just as lost as when they first met.

As John disappeared around a bend in the road Thomas heard faintly on the wind a verse his familiar song.

“When shall we meet again sweetheart? when shall we meet again? when the autumn leaves that fall from trees are green and spring up again.”

Then he was gone.

Thomas held The Captain close and the bird, for once, made no issue of being petted. It too stared down the now empty street as if bereft. Finally, Thomas lifted the parrot to his shoulder and walked into the tavern.

The sound of his boots was hidden by the dirt and the murmur of rough men. So he went unnoticed as he walked past tattooed hands, and open pistols and knots of menace. He walked right up behind Miranda and she never turned around.

He tried to think of something to say. Or if he should simply touch her shoulder. He felt almost as nervous as the first day he'd called on her to ask if she might like to accompany him to the cabinet of William Courtan, recently purchased by Sir Sloane with whom he had a standing invitation. Only he hadn't been such an awful mess then, and he hadn't felt like he'd suddenly sprung a leak like a holed boat either.

Miranda must have sensed him, because she stiffened in her seat while he was still looking for words. Thomas's throat went dry, all the moisture in his mouth seemed to flee up to his eyes which began to water from the unfair distribution. She slowly turned around, and when their eyes met her breath caught in her throat and she quoted Milton in a dry whisper.

“Me thought I saw my late espoused saint, brought to me, like Alcestis, from the grave.”

She reached up and touched his hand as if afraid he was a ghost, and Thomas gripped her fingers tightly, the rest of the stanza tumbling from his lips on instinct.

“Whom Jove's great son to her glad husband gave, rescued from death by force, though pale and faint.”

Miranda was up, almost before he finished the words, wrapping arms around with him with a strength he'd never known she could conjure, and dislodging The Captain who dropped to the table with an undignified flap. She buried her face in his collar, and if the sudden dampness of his shirt was any indication she was crying just as much as he was. It was quite the scene. If they had been in London it would have been a shocking display. But they weren't in London now. The attention they drew was mild and the only eyes he cared about belonged to a broad red headed pirated who'd just come round the bar.

The world seemed to stop, as if god had stepped down out of heaven and made everything still, just for the three of them.

Then James was striding across the room, and oh, Thomas thought he had admired the man in a uniform but that black coat and open shirt of his were going to undo him. Somehow James ushered them both out of the tavern, up a pair of stairs and into some small room with a locked door that smelled heavily of rum and wood, and then they were kissing and Thomas was sobbing openly as much for the loss of John as the recovery of his truest loves.

There was nothing but hands and lips and tears and gasps and questions for a long time, but they had all the time in the world now.

~

After Thomas relayed the tale of his adventures, confessing every last thought and fear and hope he'd had between London and Nassau, James told him he shouldn't expect to see John again, because ghosts like Flint were intangible things. Thomas still looked for him in the face of every old man he met though, and sometimes he woke in the middle of the night, unnaturally chilled in the wet heat of New Providence Island, with the horrible picture of John wandering dark roads in endless perdition etched on his mind.

On those nights he prayed for John more devoutly then he'd prayed for anything before, asking God in his mercy to grant the spirit peace. He would hold his own lovers close, trace the fine bones in Miranda's hand and the strong jaw hidden under James' red beard and muse about the cost of happiness.

There was a tinge of sorrow in their love now, Miranda for the life they'd lived, James for his career, and Thomas for John. None of them had the innocent outlook of their first affair, but as Thomas learned, nothing stayed innocent in Nassau.

John's rumors and stories had done their work though. His Father was indeed busy escaping association with Ashe and all the tangles the Bethlem debacle had left him with, and spent little effort searching for Thomas. In fact his disappearance, Thomas learned, caused almost as many problems for his father as his presence had, and their family was no longer so well thought of in London.

Miranda kept up a correspondence with one or two old servants who gave her all this news. They became almost better friends then the lady's in their old circle had ever been. When she related the goings on of London society Thomas would parse each bit of news, listening for hints of John's presence, and wondering if he had a hand in any of it, but he could never say for certain. Not even when they received news of his father's death.

The Earl became ill little more than a year after Thomas arrived in Nassau. The disease was slow and painful, and ugly, and Alfred Hamilton suffered for many months before he was carried off in the night. Nothing suggested it had been anything but a natural death, even though his father had always had a vigorous constitution. Still, Thomas could not put to rest the memory of John in the galley of the Adventure, his white hair swaying with the sea as he demurred on plans to murder Thomas's father, like he'd murdered Ashe.

Years passed, and John's old bird The Captain remained a constant companion of Thomas's. It's plumage remained as bright as the day he met John. The bird never seemed to age and it never got any more friendly. It suffered Thomas to feed it, and provide a perch, and it pecked savagely at James whenever his lover made the mistake of coming within range of its beak, but most of the time The Captain would be looking out the window at the sea and bobbing its head, waiting with simple minded hope for the return of a one legged sailor who never appeared.

A decade later Thomas was standing in a shabby office, with peeling paint and the smell of hot sand, Guava and Jackfruit outside his window while he and The Captain considered a thief that had been shackled to their bench.

The man was very young, with blue eyes, and brown skin and short black hair that curled wildly; as if it was trying to escape his head and resented the necessity of being tied to earth. The Captain had been marching back and forth across the arm of the bench and cooing in delight since James left the thief with them, and Thomas had been thinking of Ariel. That sly, delicate spirit of air and fire, who hated work, longed for freedom and sewed chaos as easily as breathing. This thief had caused a whole mess of trouble among James' ships and Thomas had never felt so much sympathy for Prospero, and how tiring it must have been keeping his fairy from disappearing in a rush of its own caprice.

The Thief was toying with a Pomegranate while The Captain nibbled at his hair. He spun the fruit in long fingered hands as he watched Thomas go about his business with the accounts, and would smile widely whenever Thomas glanced at him. The type of smile children in Nassau once gave him, when he was new and they tried to sell him leaky boats or rotten fruit for full price. A smile of affected innocence.

It was charming. Though not, Thomas suspected, for the reason their young thief thought it was. The appeal was not from the smile, but from the innocent belief his smile would get him what he wanted, and the frankly cheeky logic hiding behind it that insured they had no choice but to do just that.

The young man, was, well, delightful was the word he'd used when whispering aside to James, half joking and half serious. Miranda was skeptical and James had looked thoroughly exhausted but did not disagree with him. Which for him was as good as a confession that he found the thief's scheming just as adorable as Thomas did.

And then the thief started to sing to himself. It was so soft that Thomas barely caught the words, but when he did a chill doused him from top to bottom like icy breakwater blown in on a storm.

“My breast is cold as the clay. My breath is earthly strong,”

“And if you kiss my cold, clay lips,”Thomas whispered back, shivering as the ballad's warning left him.  “You’re days will not be long.”


End file.
